Erin Egan, Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer, asked users not to reveal the passwords to their Facebook profilesto employers. It was her reaction to the reports published in recent days showing that U.S. employers increasingly require job applicants to reveal their usernames and passwords. When they do not directly want to know the passwords, they ask applicants to log in their profiles during job interviews or to add recruiters as their friends.
Job appicants usually consider the request a privacy interference, but they often reveal their passwords because they need the work. U.S. laws do not expressly prohibit such behaviour. However, bills to prohibit public institutions to ask the access to the accounts of job applicants on social networks have already been submitted in the states of Illinois and Maryland. More and more comments of experts in the media count with the strong possibility of extending these hiring practices to Europe.
"This practice undermines the privacy expectations and the security of both the user and the user’s friends. It also potentially exposes the employer who seeks this access to unanticipated legal liability," writes Erin Egan in her statement the Facebook users. According to her, employers have no right to request the access, since it is not in accordance with the terms of use of the service. In addition, if they find that a job applicant is a member of a protected group on Facebook defined e.g. by age, his potential not hiring might be seen as discriminatory and therefore liable for prosecution. The same is true for untraining staff to deal with personal information.
"Facebook takes your privacy seriously. We’ll take action to protect the privacy and security of our users, whether by engaging policymakers or, where appropriate, by initiating legal action, including by shutting down applications that abuse their privileges," summed up Erin Egan.
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