A recent syndicated article has been circulating, addressing the practice of employers requiring prospective employees to provide their Facebook username and password, during the initial interview process. The article is titled “Can Employers Legally Ask You For Your Facebook Password When You Apply For A Job?” Why Congress and States should prohibit this practice. “As the title indicates, this article addresses the legal steps that are being and can be taken to address this questionable hiring practice. However, that article is missing the more practical and necessary side of the problem, which is the dilemma faced by the job seeker, when asked for this private information.

From the point of view of an employer and employment law attorney, I will try to briefly address this issue. The question is: until there are no laws in place to prevent the practice of an employer requesting an interviewee’s Facebook login information, what can you do to protect your Facebook privacy while searching for a new job?

Is my Facebook information private?

Yes and No. Let me explain …

The privacy settings

First, keep it clean! Always keep in mind that Facebook is constantly (apparently) changing its interface and privacy settings; stay abreast of these changes and select your own personal privacy and security settings wisely. Only post things to the public that you want the public to see. Despite the ability to select privacy settings, you should assume that future alterations to these settings or security breaches could cause your “privately” posted information to be made public. Also, anything you post is not really private anyway, which is really why we “post” to Facebook in the first place, as it is shared among your Facebook “friends”. Please note that these friends’ accounts may be shared or accessible by their spouses, family, friends, and therefore the information that you make visible to them could be shared with others, accidentally or deliberately.
Expectation of privacy

Next, despite the above, I still believe that there is a “privacy expectation” in many aspects of our Facebook accounts. We hope the privacy settings work as intended and our comments, posts, etc. It will not be shared with the general public, even if we have contemplated allowing friends or family of friends to view our posts, comments, and pages. However, we clearly have the expectation that the settings we choose, our passwords, our private emails to friends through the Facebook email interface will remain private. When a prospective employer asks for your username and password, they are asking for private and confidential information: your password, which may be linked to other accounts or have some other personal meaning that we do not wish to share. Also, they are requesting access to all your activity on Facebook: every post, every game, every comment, every email. You reasonably expect that many of these things in themselves remain private. Additionally, only you are reasonably expected to see the accumulation of this data. Would any prospective employer request access to your private email account, your computer’s hard drive, all the metadata, and internet browser history of all the sites you’ve visited on your computer? Of course they wouldn’t, but logging into your Facebook account grants this same kind of information: access to any personal emails you’ve sent through the Facebook email interface, a complete view of each and every one. of the posts and comments you have made, a quick view of ALL your Facebook activity, covering all the time you have had your Facebook account, and access to your security settings, friend lists, blocked friends, etc. This is an invasion of your reasonable expectations of privacy.

How do I respond to a request from a prospective employer for my Facebook login information?

If you’ve read the preceding paragraph, I think a very pragmatic approach to addressing such a request would be to explain in response to such a query, outlining the concerns detailed above. Combine those privacy concerns with an offer of a less intrusive method for the prospective employer to obtain the information they are looking for. What is the employer looking for? In part, it could be simply to assess how you respond to such a request. So be prepared to respond with confidence, addressing your privacy concerns and offering a different approach, and returning the question to the employer. Ask the interviewer or potential employer what they are looking for and, if it is reasonable in their opinion, offer yourself a “friend” to give you an idea of ​​what information is available. Alternatively, you can offer to simply answer their questions on any given topic, which puts the responsibility back on them to explain what precise information they are looking for. These approaches show problem-solving ability and critical thinking on your part, which are probably good qualities for whatever job you’re looking for. They show that you cooperate and work constructively to resolve potential conflicts, while upholding your beliefs.

Should I create a second Facebook profile?

Creating a second “clean” or fictitious Facebook profile is a possible approach to the situation, as well as a form of “friendship” with your mother or other family members, while protecting the privacy of your less discreet, more posts Lewd or frivolous activities and activities between you and your closest “friends”. However, keep in mind that by doing this, friends, family, or potential employers with whom you share the fictitious account information, may discover or learn of the existence of your other accounts and may react unpleasantly to the deception of being targeted. or relegated to a second fictitious account.

Can I use my work computer or cell phone for personal use, social media, email, Facebook?

The simple answer to this question is NO! I am asked this question a lot, and the basic answer is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in any information transmitted or digitally entered on / through a work computer, cell phone or other device. The device belongs to your employer and therefore the employer has the right to be sixteen or see the device itself at any time, and regardless of whether you delete the ESI (electronically stored information), as most people understand in In this digital age, deleting the ESI rarely ever completely erases and destroys that information. Without going into the technical details of it (which I’m not qualified to fully expose anyway), when you delete electronically stored information, you are simply removing ROM access to that information and indexing; the actual information remains on the drive. , although partitioned somewhere and not indexed. Over time it may be partially or totally overwritten, but this may not happen for a considerable period of time, if ever. Also, when transmitting information through your corporate device, that information will likely pass through and be processed by your company’s server, leaving traces and the actual underlying information there for your employer to see. Additionally, auto-stored passwords and others, if enabled, can give your employer easy access to ALL of your account information. This topic deserves much more, but that is not the purpose of this article.

In conclusion, this is a very interesting topic, both from a legislative and labor point of view, and I am eager to read any relevant comments, anecdotes and, ultimately, see how this landscape evolves over time.