Should Employers Be Allowed to Ask for Your Facebook Login?
The American Civil Liberties Union has taken up the cause of a Maryland man who was forced to cough up his Facebook password during a job interview with the Department of Corrections in that state.
Context & Ripple Effects
A year after GigaOM reported that HR executives were quietly checking candidates' Facebook pages, the practice has escalated from browsing public profiles to demanding credentials outright: a Maryland Department of Corrections applicant was made to surrender his Facebook password during a job interview, and the ACLU has now taken up his case.
First-order effects
- The Maryland Department of Corrections' interview screening practice is now publicly contested, with the ACLU giving the unnamed applicant legal backing and a platform.
- Employers currently requesting login credentials during hiring face immediate reputational exposure, since the ACLU's involvement turns a private HR procedure into a named civil-liberties dispute.
Second-order effects
- Other state agencies and private employers running social-media background checks must decide whether to keep credential-based screening or retreat to public-profile review before they become the next target.
- Facebook is drawn into an employer-practice fight it did not start, as password-sharing demands sit awkwardly against its own account-security rules and put pressure on the company to take a public position.
Third-order effects
- If credential demands spread beyond corrections hiring, the gap between what employers may view and what they may demand points toward legislation or regulatory guidance drawing that line explicitly for all employers.
- The episode marks an early test of whether personal social-media accounts are treated like references (fair game) or like diaries (off-limits), a distinction courts and lawmakers will increasingly be asked to settle.
The trend: Hiring due diligence is shifting from viewing public profiles to demanding private account access, and civil-liberties groups are beginning to force that practice into the open.