Employer demands facebook login for background checks

[faceless]

[eefanincan]

"It's a fantastic back door to discrimination. All sorts of things that they can't ask about in interviews will be on display."

Exactly!!!

[Brown Sauce]

If an employer can't conduct an interview, and make their minds up about someone without digging into this stuff, then they need to ask themselves a couple of questions.

If a future employer asked me for anything like this, they'd lose a good future employee.

[pirtybirdy]

Does one have to have a Facebook account to apply? I didn't have one for years. I only got one in the last couple of years. I wonder what would happen if he said he didn't have a social network account.

[SpursFan1902]

That's a load of crap. Apparently, we no longer have personal lives. I understand that certain positions require more of background check than others, but this is ridiculous. I probably wouldn't have given my info up although, I don't have anything to hide... I think it is absurd they would even ask!

[eefanincan]

I agree spurs --- certainly in my job as a nurse, there are background checks, including a criminal background check. But facebook goes beyond what's appropriate ---- if they want to check on their own, well, so be it, you can't stop that. BUT to demand personal log in information is intruding on private life.

[Kezza]

Silly as this sounds, I deleted my Fbook account precisely because I am unemployed and looking for a job. It's not unrealistic to expect that a future employer or HR Person will "Google" you, so the less that's out there, the better.

Also, I created a new e-mail account just for job-searching.

And jeez, even online websites (banking, ebay, paypal, etc) say that they will never ask for your password!! So this s**t is really f***d up. Dang.

[faceless]

I've never used my own name on anything online - precisely because of how easy it is to find out info, and because there's plenty of arseholes who would want to cause trouble.