Ethics Alarms’ predecessor, The Ethics Scoreboard, had a feature known as “Easy Calls,” where I would render periodic ethics verdicts I thought should be obvious. Today’s talk radio and blogosphere sensation, the report that asking for a job applicant’s Facebook password is becoming a common practice of employers, is a classic easy call. And like a lot of those on the Scoreboard, an amazing number of people are getting this easy call wrong anyway.
For example, I heard lawyer-radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham today mock complaints about the practice, saying it was a legal request. Sure, it’s legal. It is still wrong, an indefensible incursion of personal privacy. “You are always free to look for a job somewhere else,” Ingraham says, as if that makes everything fine. Being free to reject an unfair and coercive job requirement doesn’t make it any less unethical. Law professor Orrin Kerr says that the Facebook demand is in the same league as demanding a job applicant’s house keys. Let’s see, what else could a prospective employer ask?
Can I see your phone records? Let me check the history on your PC. What talk radio shows do you listen to? Who did you vote for in the last six elections? Please let me look at all of your personal photographs, home videos and personal journals over the last three years. I want to put a camera in your home office and a tape recorder in your home dining room for a week, OK? How much do you drink, on average? What’s your caloric intake? What sexual activities do you enjoy? What charities do you give to? How much, would you say? Did you use any illegal drugs as a college student? Is your child sexually active?
Some of these questions may be precluded by law, and some may not; ethically, it makes no difference. They are all outrageous invasions of privacy that no employer should ask, and even more important, that no job seeker should answer.
And that’s how we stop this. There doesn’t need to be a law, just a critical mass of qualified job applicants who 1) refuse to answer the Facebook question, and who 2) agree to publicize the name on any employer who has the gall to make such a demand.
If an employer has so little respect for you and your privacy, so little trust in your judgment, and so little hesitation to use financial pressure to make you reveal what you no one should have to reveal, then you don’t want to work there.
Neither should anyone else.
Warn them.
Ethics Alarms 
I’m not in the know on this but isn’t coercion and invasion of privacy illegal?
Not in general, only when a legislature defines what “privacy” is.
It isn’t coercion any more than it’s coercion for a propective employer to ask for your name, address, and telephone number.
It’s also not an illegal invasion of privacy. They aren’t doing anything without your consent. You could consider it subjorning illegal behavior (as some ToS say that you aren’t allowed to share passwords), but that’s a completely separate matter.
I’m with Jack. This is an easy call for unethical (even if legal), and shaming companies that do it sounds perfectly right to me.
Oops I was under the impression that these were employees,not applicants.
Great post, spot on. But you didn’t even get into what I would consider the secondary effect. What if I work for a large corporation and a friend of mine has applied for a job and gives in to this type of coercion? Now my private settings have been circumvented because a friend let the intruder in the front door. I think it’s Unethical for an Applicant to even grant such access without properly informing all friends and removing / (unfriending) ones that object to such practice.
I sure as hell wouldn’t give them mine. They can keep their job! And yes I would publish that employers name ALL over the inter-webs!
Just trying to weed out the potential educators who have posted nude pictures of themselves on Facebook before they are hired?
Still. A terrible idea.
I’m still really bothered by this.
What if my Facebook profile says I’m Jewish. Or black. Or white. Or planning on becoming pregnant in the next 6 years. These are answers to questions that employers can not ask (if I’m not mistaken). So instead of asking the question, they can just ask for the answers? Who’s to say they weren’t influenced by information on a legally protected category?
Wouldn’t they be exposing themselves to claims of discriminatory hiring practices?
Or would their hiring practices actually have to show discriminatory trends to validate such a claim?
The law can’t stop them from looking at a public Facebook page and discovering these things, and can’t stop them from asking you to surrender the keys to the site “voluntarily.” They can’t ask those other questions because the law makes acting on the answers discriminatory. This, however, is like asking, “Do you have anything to hide? If not, will you prove it?”
For exactly these reasons, many businesses won’t even look at an employee’s public social media pages out of fear that they will learn something they’re not supposed to know. They get around this problem, however, by hiring a third-party screening firm to investigate an applicant’s social media presence and report back to them only on legally permissible matters such as drug abuse or criminal activity.
Surely there are detailed, burdensome federal and lower jurisdiction regulations that apply to these requested disclosures of personal identifying information – and specifically to the safeguarding, use and disposition of that information in the vetting and hiring processes of private employers? Maybe not. I don’t know. Must research…
Until this gets sorted out, if you might be faced with this when applying for a job, here are some possible actions you can take that some folks may not know of:
1) Depending on how they ask and how carefully you want to shade the truth, you can deactivate your Facebook account and tell them you do not have an (active) account.
When you deactivate your account, your profile (timeline) and all information associated with it disappears from the Facebook service immediately. People on Facebook will not be able to search for you or view any of your information.
https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=214376678584711
At some later date, should you decide to reactive the account, everything will be restored, just don’t leave your default privacy as “public” when you do.
2) If the employer just wants to be “friends”, you can add them to your “Restricted List” and they will only see posts that are public or tagged with them.
Lists give you an optional way to share a post with a custom audience or exclude some friends from a post based on how well you know them.
https://www.facebook.com/help/search/?q=friend+lists
Or create a “co-workers” list and include them in that so whatever you present to friends at work matches what your employer sees.
3) If they insist on logging into your account, clean out anything or anyone you don’t want them to see, create a temporary password for them to use and change it afterwards.
Later, in your Facebook account, go to Security Settings, Active Sessions and clear out the session related to the employer’s computer (or just clear them all out and re-login yourself)
If you really want to be all Ninja about it, you can use “Login Approvals” otherwise known as “Two-factor Authentication” which uses a combination of “what you know”, your password, with “something you have”, your cell phone, to allow access from an unknown computer. They would need your password and a numeric code that Facebook sends to your cellphone when logging in from a new computer that only works for a couple of minutes. If you’ve cleared out their session, even if you haven’t changed the password, they will need a new code to log in again.
Gmail offers the same two-factor authentication feature as an option.
All of this is worth knowing, though various kinds of deceit and deception to fool your potential employer 1) gives him a legitimate reason to fire you for cause if he finds out 2) surrenders the ethical high ground 3)robs you of the enjoyment of an unspied-upon Facebook page, and most of all, doesn’t address the fact that anyone who tries to force you to let them see what you choose not to let them see is a skunk that you don’t want to work for anyway.
To think: I was going to sign in to Facebook tonight, after not having signed in for almost several months. Now, I’m sitting here, fretting, wondering that perhaps it might not be such a bad idea if I kept alive my string of consecutive days of not having signed in.
“Law professor Orrin Kerr says that the Facebook demand is in the same league as demanding a job applicant’s house keys.”
I think Law professor Orrin Kerr is one of the smartest people I’ve ever heard of.
I wonder how many of these companies would be willing to give each and every prospective employee the password to the corporate web site?
–Dwayne
P.S. I’m self-employed. Am I unethical for remembering my Facebook password while I’m working? 🙂
Absolutely.
Boy. you are STRICT!!!
😆
That animated emoticon creeps me out. Reminds me of “The Langoliers.”