Where the hell do people get off demanding others to turn over their Facebook user names and passwords? This is a violation of privacy in one of the grossest forms.
I’m sorry, but if I apply for a job and they demand access to my private Facebook information, they can kiss my ass. A company that willfully disregards the rights of its employees is not a company that I want to work for.
Facebook is part of your personal life. I don’t see corporations following these people home to see how their home life is, or wanting to read the text messages on their phone. Perhaps they would like to see how applicants’ sex lives are? Because, really, should they be employing sado-masochists?? Is that really conducive to a teambuilding corporate atmosphere?
I’m all for criminal background checks. If you’ve been charged with a crime, that is no longer your personal life, but public life. I can understand credit checks (only for companies having to do with finance…otherwise it seems pointless). But companies have no need or right to prod into your personal life.
(This is, of course, assuming you don’t already grant public access on your Facebook page. If you do, stop that. Also, I don’t want people trying to jump down my throat saying “if you put it on Facebook, you have no expectation of privacy.” There is a big difference between an idiot leaving their embarrassing photos for all the world to see and someone demanding access to my account to view every last detail that I have kept from being public for a reason.)
Know your rights. Giving others password information or allowing someone, other than yourself, to access your account is a violation of Facebook’s terms of use that you agreed to when you created your account. Tell anyone who may want this information that they should be ashamed of themselves.
Then offer them a sex tape.
Ugh. I’m so torn on this. It is against FB’s policy, so I wonder how long before Zuckerberg is paid off to change that little bit of info?
First, government officials? Maybe. But then, it’s a super slippery slope. How far from a government official to a civilian? Not very damn far.
It’s incredibly wrong to use FB against someone. Mine was used against me, in prevention of a raise. I had received an iPad as a bonus and in my spare time, I would upload pictures to FB. They were already saved on my iPad, so all I had to do was click a couple of buttons. Several months later, I was told that there had been numerous complaints about my productivity and my FB usage. Evidently, there were people who believed that I was on FB too much during work hours. Now, you remember that job. I got no lunch break 4 days out of 5. No breaks really at all. Half the time if I needed to use the restroom, I took my laptop and phone with me. I got calls at all hours of the day and night on days when I worked and when I was off because people didn’t pay attention to protocol. So these “complaints” about my FB presence were quite the slap in the face. Shortly before, there had been an email from the company owner stating that we should be careful about what we post on FB because future employers could use our FB against us and it can really hurt the companys’ appearance. WTF?
After I got that phone call, I was furious. I deleted every single work friend I had, except one. And that got me a slap on the wrist too…the company wanted to see my FB presence diminish and it appeared that all I had done was give them the finger. Duh?
Social media is a tricky tricky thing. I’m so thankful that I’m no longer working so I don’t have to deal with idiots who think they should control every aspect of our lives.