If you think privacy settings on your Facebook and Twitter accounts guarantee future employers or schools can't see your private posts, guess again.Read the rest here.
Employers and colleges find the treasure-trove of personal information hiding behind password-protected accounts and privacy walls just too tempting, and some are demanding full access from job applicants and student athletes.
In Maryland, job seekers applying to the state's Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall.
Previously, applicants were asked to surrender their user name and password, but a complaint from the ACLU stopped that practice last year. While submitting to a Facebook review is voluntary, virtually all applicants agree to it out of a desire to score well in the interview, according Maryland ACLU legislative director Melissa Coretz Goemann.
A couple of years ago I filled out a job application for a civil service position in Wyoming. They asked right on the application for passwords to my email and all social networking sites and the names of any blogs I owned. I wrote "None of your business" on that line. They never even bothered sending me a "thank you for applying" note.
It's getting to be that the best-paid jobs now come with the expectation that you voluntarily give up your rights, privacy, and freedom to some degree. OR... you have to be willing to snitch on or lord it over your fellow citizens.
ReplyDeleteIf you're not willing to do it, then you get stuck with the so-so or bad jobs. It used to be that only government jobs with clearances required that. I see some very scary historical parallels, indeed.