There have been a number of news reports recently, mostly emanating from the United States, that employers are demanding that prospective employees provide their passwords so that their Facebook accounts can be scrutinised.  This is in clear breach of Facebook's own policy on rights and responsibilities, and there have been many complaints to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over the practice.

Some employers have attempted to get around the restriction by instead demanding that jobseekers sign into their account in the presence of the interview and allow themselves to be 'shoulder-surfed'; that is allow their profile to be examined by the person who they may be working for. This practice has also been condemned by the ACLU, as the practice is possibly in violation of state laws concerning an individual's privacy.

Facebook's privacy settings allow a user to lock down his or her profile quite tightly, so that they can choose who sees their posts by group or on an individual basis. The development that an employer considers it acceptable to demand access to an individual's profile so that it can be scrutinised for any comment or photo that the employer does not approve of, is alarming to say the least.  Opponents of this practice argue that it is no different from an employer demanding access to an individual's email or even their diary, yet there seems to be a growing number of employers who are doing this.

Separately, US colleges are now requiring some of their students who participate in college sports to add their coach as a 'friend' so that they can be monitored for compliance. There are even companies such as UDiligence, who offer tools to allow the accounts to be monitored for 'inappropriate' posts; although this tool must be added by the account holder it is easy to see that it will be a mandatory requirement if the student wishes to participate in the college sports programme.

The whole issue raises a number of questions; uppermost in my mind is this one: is it because the job market is currently so competitive that employers feel that they can make such demands? That is to say, if one person refuses to divulge his or her password so the account can be scrutinised by a third party, the employer does not care because there will always be a candidate who will say yes, since jobs are so scarce.

Another question which I certainly would be asking of the interviewer is this: would it be OK if I were to take a photo of them during the interview and tweet it for all to see? I know what the answer would be to that, but why should it be any different for the candidate? I fear the answer is that the employers feel that because they have something people want (i.e. the job) they can make any sort of demand on their candidates and the one that is prepared to divluge their own private profile is the one they hire.  With the job market as competitive as it is, do employers feel that they 'own' every aspect of their employees' lives? If you work for an organisation, how comfortable would you feel about your employer feeling entitled to pry into your life. If the practice of prying into a person's social media profile becomes acceptable, can employers then track your phone, bug your car or home in order to ensure that you are not doing, or saying anything about which they do not approve? Not that I'm suggesting companies WOULD go to such lengths to keep an eye on those who work for them, but the idea that they CAN, is chilling enough.

This is a worrying trend and one I hope does not spread to other countries, I would like to think that privacy laws in the United Kingdom would disallow similar practices by HR departments here, but the growing trend among US students to create an account under an assumed name, leaving only  a 'fan page' under their real name suggests that laws in the United States certainly need to be tightened to put a stop to this practice.

The answers to the problem of employers demanding access to your online life (and your life itself, by definition) are either to delete all your social media accounts and switch your computer off for good, or if you do want to use the Internet to improve your life as so many have before, then the answer is to work for yourself - and that's a whole different subject!