Job Applicants Asked for Facebook Passwords

[THEoriginalBRIEN]

This is a pretty easy fix.

Set Facebook account to SUPER PRIVATE.
Create fake Facebook account.
Let your friends know what's going on. Friend them.
Give login info to company.
Never use again.

Or just say you don't have one after step one. They shouldn't be able to find your page unless you want them to.

I think I'd rather delete mine than hand it over. I hate using it these days anyway.
As for other social media networks, aside from Google+, it's all anonymous. So denial, denial, denial.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

....Seriously? That's stupid.

I understand if the employer wants to look at the employee's profile (if they've made it public), but they want the password too?! Why? What LEGAL use would you have for that?

 

[spectrenihlus]

Inb4idon'twanttoliveonthisplanetanymore

This is pretty crazy, I hope this is illegal and the government puts a stop to it.

I doubt it is illegal after all they are not forcing you to work there. If you want the job there I guess that is what you are going to do hopefully the recruiters realize that this is stopping the prospective employees looking into this job and it goes away organically as opposed to creating an brand new law.

 

[Spud of Doom]

Such a sad thing to ask for.

 

[The Bandit]

Many people lock their information so that only friends can view them, and they want to look into your private messages to make sure that you aren't participating in any illegal...whatevers.

I can think of many reasons why transparency is a good thing. (The primary reason being that it would save lives).

Anyone care to put forth an argument that's pro-privacy? And no, 'Privacy is a human right' is not a good argument. You have to explain why it's worth letting people die over.

So let me get this straight, the reason they want to have access to my account would be so they can scroll through my private messages to make sure I'm not an axe-murderer/peadophile/drug dealer/anti-christ?

Isn't that what a police background check is for?

Privacy is a human right, human rights being violated is a pretty damn good arguement to not do something (just as it would be a self-explanitory reason not to do a lot of things).

This isn't like checking to see if someone is carrying a knife or a firearm on them, this is poking through people's private messages (most of which I can guarantee you are just idle chatter between friends and family) you aren't saving lives with this (nice try at overdramatising it though) you're just being nosey.

But let me humour you, let's say that the fact that violating a human right isn't enough on it's own and that there are no good pro-privacy arguements, how exactly does this save lives and make it worth the breach of human rights?

Consider it part of the background check. What you do in private reveals more about you as a person than anything you do in public.

What makes privacy a human right? Who decided that? What purpose does privacy serve? What benefits are there to privacy?

As I said, 'It's a human right, end all' is a piss poor argument.

Edit: Nothing is self-explanatory. 'Just because' is an even worse argument than 'It's a human right, end all' is.

Supreme Court. Roe v Wade. Decision based around our (well, women's) right to privacy.

I shouldn't even respond since you said that garbage about dictators, but whatever. I'll feel better.

 

[VanityGirl]

Illegal, immoral and I wouldn't do it.

 

[Something Amyss]

Illegal, immoral and I wouldn't do it.

Good for you, but I'm pretty sure they'd have a hard time arguing illegality. This sort of thing has happened before and not held up to legal challenge.

Sorry.

 

[13thforswarn]

Simply unacceptable. Period.

 

[McMullen]

consider the words of former News of the World deputy editor Paul McMullen, who very likely summed up a widespread contemporary attitude toward privacy in his testimony at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday. "Privacy is for pedos," he said. "Fundamentally, no one else needs it."

May that man have his credit card data stolen continuously for the rest of his life. May he become so consistently associated with ID theft and fraud investigations that financial institutions turn away from any dealings with him merely upon hearing his name. May the IRS conduct monthly audits on him. May his prospective employers always know the things about him that make him a less desirable candidate. And should he wind up on the street, may the people he begs from understand that charity to him is a lost cause.

I had thought, before reading that quote, that people understood that there are reasons to keep some information private other than just to conceal criminal activity. When your employers, email services, and banks tell you not to give your password out, it's not because they're encouraging you to be a criminal.

What the hell is wrong with that man? And what the hell is wrong with this police department?

 

[Danceofmasks]

Oh come on.
I gotta ask Paul McMullen: Are you telling me employers that ask for passwords aren't pedos?

 

[Ralphfromdk]

What I don't get about this is: What do the employer expect to find in your profile that they can't with out your password and log on?

Do they think I have messages about meth dealing and child porn on my Facebook? I mean... what the fuck are you hoping to find there?

If I ever run into this in the future, they will get a log on that looks like this:
Name: Go fuck
Password: Yourself

 

[sketch_zeppelin]

What i want to know is what if you don't belong to any online social networks? Are they not even considered for the position?

If this becomes the norm then i'm screwed. I've never social networks and i'm not likely to start...unless you count the Escapist.

 

[Callate]

Y'know, even if this weren't dubiously legal on the basis of asking Facebook clients to reveal information they're contractually obligated not to share, it's even more dubious in that it requires the applicant to provide information that employers aren't allowed to use in considering employment, such as sexual preference, religious beliefs, marital status, and whether the applicant has children. Possibly without even knowing they're revealing that information or being judged on it.

On that basis alone, they deserve to be reduced by lawyers to a smoking crater.

 

[poleboy]

Providing your password is a direct violation of the Facebook Terms of Service. Item 4, point 8: You will not share your password, (or in the case of developers, your secret key), let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account.

Thus, the police force is asking for a person to break the terms of a previously agreed to contract. This is illegal to do, and as such cannot be used to discriminate against the person during the hiring process if they refuse to do so. Anybody who refuses to do so and subsequently does not get hired has a case against the North Carolina police department in question, and should sue.

Civil Justice Man, away!

(I don't have much to add except to agree and say well put.)

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Yeah, I'd just make a new profile, one where I'm constantly being sent messages thanking me for running that marathon for charity, and thanking me for saving that drowning child from a river and donating a spare kidney for a terminal patient, and stopped an armed robbery at my previous employers single handed and unarmed.

Then I'd by all means hand it over.

Or, alternatively, I'd go apply to a company whose management layer is not entirely staffed by clueless yet malicious DICKS.

As for McCullen, the problem with his attitude about privacy, is that he's in a very special situation, he both knows that he's a ****, and doesn't care if everyone else knows. Most normal people, if they'd done even one of the terrible things he has, would try to hide it and feel bad about it, not gleefully revel in being so despicable, he's like some kind of movie villain.

At least some of the people caught in the Leveson enquiry have had the humanity to be shamed about the things they've done to keep a job.

He thinks because someone's had a child abducted and murdered, they're suddenly 'celebs' and deserve to have him in their garden rooting thru their bins in the hope of finding porn or drugs.

EDIT: also, privacy is important when you know you can't for a moment trust that anything reported in the tabloids will stick to the facts. Say for example, Justin Bieber's bin has a cold remedy packet in it, that's enough for the headline 'Bieber in teen drugs binge shame', then about 4 paragraphs down mention that it was entirely legal drugs. If you're not sure that's enough, just write that he's probably abusing them to get a 'legal high' and you've got another page of shite to print.

Not that I like him, but I'd defend Bieber over the UK tabloids any day.

 

[Aeshi]

I like how everybody's going "oh then post all your personal data here" because giving your personal information to the Police/Government is exactly the same as handing it out to random people rite guyz?

 

[awsome117]

How is everyone missing the point here?

It's a trick question. The police don't want tech-stupid people working their computers, so if anyone actually answers the question they're out. Pretty clever actually.

Quoted again, because people aren't seeing this.

 

[FamoFunk]

Extreme.

I'd certainly tell them no, and if I don't earn a job because of it then so be it. My life outside of work is just that, it's none of their damn business unless I make it by having certain people as friends etc.

 

[brainslurper]

I didn't know it was illegal to ask for information on a job offering. I thought if they didn't want to give up that information, they wouldn't get the job. Also, it takes all of 30 seconds to make a fake Facebook and friend a couple respectable people you don't know.

 

[Iron Mal]

It does matter why. That's extremely important. If you can't explain why something is a human right, then you can't defend it, nor can I argue against it. It's a meaningless term.

"I believe that colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is a grammatically correct sentence. But it has no meaning. It's just there. Unless you can explain what makes a human right a human right, then it's at the same level as "I believe that colorless green ideas sleep furiously".

There's a difference between an arguement that is self-evident and doesn't need defending or explanation because of that (the arguement for not violating human rights, if you have any semblence of compassion or humanity then you'd realise these are basic things that are a given essential for everyone regardless of context) and random nonsense that just happens to make grammatical sense (your gibberish).

Some things simply cannot be argued against, some things don't need defending and some things are self-evident.

You're trying to approach this with pure logic (I do it myself sometimes) but it needs to be remembered that not everything can be explained logically and not everything really needs to be (in fact, assuming that everything must have a logical explanation is a logical fallacy in itself), something being illogical doesn't nessercarily make it wrong (even more so when you start entering topics like morallity and ethics which don't really have conclusive or definitive answers to questions).

As such no matter how hard to try to argue 'well why do we have human rights anyway?' you're wrong and I won't discuss the matter further.

If you can come up with a good reason why mass violation of a human right is justified then I'll engage the topic again, until then, I leave you to the many other people who seem to openly disagree with you (some of who can explain the reasoning and technicalities of human rights better than I can).