Now Your Embarrassing/Job-Threatening Facebook Photos Could Haunt You For Seven Years
These privacy sunglasses are seeming like more of a necessity — Last week, the Federal Trade Commission gave a stamp of approval to a background check company that screens job applicants based on their Internet photos and postings.
Context & Ripple Effects
The arc here runs from embarrassment to infrastructure. Back in 2008, [[a:1183434|the Washington Post profiled a college student whose flashy Facebook page cost him an internship]] — an anecdote about individual recruiters googling candidates. In February 2011, Google moved toward face search built on social network photos, making people findable across platforms rather than just within one network.
This week's development changes the mechanism from informal snooping to a formalized industry: the Federal Trade Commission has signed off on a background check company whose product screens job applicants based on their internet photos and postings, with a reported lookback stretching to seven years. Regulatory approval matters because it converts what used to be a hiring manager's private habit into a repeatable, saleable screening service.
First-order effects
- Job applicants now face a documented, standardized review of up to seven years of photos and postings whenever they apply through this channel — old material they assumed had scrolled away becomes part of their file.
- The FTC's sign-off gives the screening firm legitimacy with HR buyers, letting it market compliance-friendly vetting where ad-hoc recruiter searches carried legal risk for employers.
Second-order effects
- Competing background check firms will need matching social-screening products or risk losing accounts to whichever vendor offers the fuller picture, pushing the whole industry toward social data as standard line items.
- Employers gain a cheaper, broader diligence tool, which pressures job seekers to scrub profiles and lock down settings — shifting behavior across every social network users fear being searched on.
Third-order effects
- If regulators keep approving social-media screening as a legitimate background check category, personal online history hardens into a de facto permanent credential, and pressure will grow for rules governing accuracy, consent, and how far back such checks may reach.
- Combined with face search over social photos arriving the same year, the pattern points toward automated identification of people in images — meaning the photo itself, not just the caption, becomes screenable.
The trend: Social network activity is moving from informal recruiter curiosity into regulated, industrialized employment screening, with the FTC's approval decisions setting the boundary of what counts as fair vetting.