US senators: Investigate employers asking for Facebook passwords

Don't forget that many people use the same password everywhere, so if they've got someone's Facebook password, they've probably got access to that person's email account, which will make it easy to find your bank, etc.

Apropos of nothing, if you do this you're a complete fuckhead and deserve what you get.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. I'm not that well versed in Facebook protocols.

Yeah, tell that to my school, which forces us to use the same username and password for everything we have to log into on campus. I pointed this out to them, but apparently too many people were whining about how inconvenient it was for them to remember more than once username and password.

Whoever at the school made that decision should be fired immediately. They know nothing about computer security.

The same could be said for 90% of the people on the web.

Soooo....do I get holidays and weekends off?

Make a fake account.

kinda like when professors used to post grades by their offices. They thought they were protecting people's anonymity by posting SSNs instead of names.

That sounds like a bullshit excuse somebody came up with on the fly. Allowing people to use the same password for multiple systems if they want to does not necessitate requiring it.

There's a big difference between the two. The use of drugs can be a safety issue, and the use of drugs is illegal. The problem here is that employers are asking for the facebook passwords of prospective employees to find information that they can't legally ask, like information about religion, marital status, etc. to discriminate with, which is very illegal.

Honestly I'm under the impression that the IT people were being lazy.

They're also looking for any instances of the prospective employee bad mouthing previous employers. It's stupid of a prospie to do, but it's unethical for a prospective employer to dig around for such info, just as it's illegal for a past employer to disclose why an employee left the company.

Then terminate the employee if he/she commits safety violations. That doesn't require a drug test. Alcohol is legal. You can go home and get a snootfull every night of your life and as long as you have your act together by the next shift, don't call out sick frequently, show up on time, work sober, do a good job, fill your quota, etc., most employers don't care. I've had coworkers like that.

Since drugs are illegal, how many employers do you know of that check up on their employees to see if they are after-hours cat burglars, arsonists, international jewel thieves, mother rapers, father rapers, or anything else?

We have your confession right here.

Wordforge finds you guilty of having a FC account!

Uncle Albert agrees!

I have so many different usernames and passwords I can't remember them all. But I have them all in a file on the computer. The file is in a very obscure place that really has nothing to do with that, has an innocent-looking name, has no extension to show what program it was made with, and is locked with a password that is never used on any internet board.

It is unlikely anyone would ever find the file even if they had lots of time to go through my computer, let alone be able to open it. It would require a serious hacker to do it, and serious hackers would not be interested in me, because they are not about to get anything even if they did get my internet passwords. I have no serious amount of money, no top-secret information, no crimes to cover up, no close connections to anyone highly enough placed in government for it to matter, nothing.

And it allows me to vary between "12345" and "54321" as much as I want for passwords...

Well, apparently the ones that want access to their employee's Facebook accounts.

It is not illegal to disclose why an employee left a company. It is, on the other hand, a great way to get sued by a previous employee.

That's a nice line in principle, but in practice there comes a point when it can't be followed.

Let's take the state I live in. South Australia was settled by Europeans as a commercial enterprise. People paid to buy lots of land and settle here, no forced resettlement through convicts etc, with the conditions that people living here would follow the laws of the land. Would that mean that in your view anyone living here nowadays is still obligated to follow the wishes of the state government (effectively the descendant of that commercial enterprise) without any right to complain about government intrusion into our lives?

Or, as is more realistic, would you say that at some point there comes an "enough is enough" line where we say the ability to dictate conditions is lost?

Maybe the case here is not so easy. In most Facebook accounts, users can not only access information about themselves, but also information about their friends. Disclosing the password to a Facebook account means disclosing all information that is accessible using the account. Those types of information may include messages, pictures, or very personal data. While I can give my friends permission to see my personal data, under some jurisdictions it may be illegal for my friends to grant any other persons the permission to see my data.
Now you might say: it's the responsibility of my friends to not disclose my personal information to other people. But if it is indeed illegal to disclose the information, it is also illegal for the employer to ask anyone to do it.

Yeah terminate the employee after he plows his ambulance into a minivan killing a soccer mom and her two kids going to practice. Then pay the family a huge amount of money from the following lawsuit.

And people who drink a snootful every night are likely drinking a snootful during their shift too.

I'll agree that testing the kid for drugs at Blockbuster might be a waste of time but there are plenty of jobs we don't need people being on drugs working in.

On top of that what if the employer decides it doesn't want to hire you because the employer has decided your friends are scummy or jerks or just anything.....

Maybe one of your friends just got out of jail and is talking about it. Now your prospective employer knows and decides not to hire you because they are retarded and think that if you know a criminal that makes you a criminal.

Fuck that!

If an employee shows up to work drunk or hire, they deserve to get fired.

However, an employer has NO GODDAMN RIGHT to tell me what I can or can not do in my own private time.

And you have NO GODDAMN RIGHT to put the employer in the position of being liable for your private time actions that you then bring to work.

You're making the false assumption that I would bring my private life to work. As I stated above, if someone shows up drunk or high, they should be fired.

Now, please continue to argue how it's any of an employers goddamn business how I choose to live my life.

Zombie make the big assumption that the drinker will drink at work. Its been shown that many alcoholics are able to keep their jobs and NOT drink at work. Along with non-alcoholics.

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It is impossible to not bring your private life to work. And even if you don't show up to work high the fact that you're ravaging your body with drugs or drink can affect your job performance.

"And people who drink a snootful every night are likely drinking a snootful during their shift too."

Didn't say it's a lock. That everyone does it.

But even then people who are alcoholics even if they don't drink on the job still show signs of having a problem. Some also still talk about drinking unless you're planning on telling me that they hide that too.

Leonard Nimoy (Spock) drank heavily every night after filming TOS eps.