Facebook has revolutionized how we share information with others, as well as how much we share with the virtual world. However, employers have instilled fear in its users in how much is visible on their profiles. Incriminating photographs, questionable wall posts and public outbursts on your Facebook wall could determine whether you acquire employment – a terrifying prospect, especially in light of the current job market being so competitive. According to an article published in The Daily Free Press today, employers may demand employees’ Facebook profile passwords to investigate their personal information. Obviously, this poses a blatant invasion of privacy and could lead to a variety of discrimination claims.
While it is within a potential employer’s jurisdiction to want to investigate people’s profiles, delving into their personal lives by signing in to the site is extreme. A compromise could be to have a representative at an interview process taking potential employees through a screening process. Nevertheless, Facebook is classified as a “social network” for a reason. Its users have a right to separate their social lives from their professional ones. If a company is unhappy with content on one of their employee’s pages, it can ask them to ensure there is no public association to their company listed on the page itself. Perhaps this could be the advent of “professional” Facebook profiles that exclude inappropriate content from their page.
However, this raises the question of what classifies inappropriate content. The cases vary depending on the career path and company in question. Should an applicant be photographed with alcohol, it may not necessarily be fair to assume that the individual is irresponsible or reckless. Yet these checks will still remain necessary as a general sense of who the person is and what they value. Therefore, partial responsibility lies on users to maintain a base level of professionalism on their profile pages.
Being required to give out your Facebook password to anyone is an infringement of personal liberty. Often, people’s passwords to Facebook are the same for other sites they use, including access to their bank account. Ultimately, this information should remain private, for how you choose to portray yourself to your peers is a personal decision that cannot and should not be tampered with by an employer.
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