(This weeks roundup is a bit late – I got home late from the LetsTalkGeek podcast, so it is up today!)

We live in a world where our on-line lives are intertwined with our real world lives.

Often what we do on-line reflects who we are. Often we “do” that in publicly accessible areas.

Some of those services are less than public – Facebook, for example. And your email.

Tonight I answer the question: Should employers be allowed to check your social networking sites?

No.

That was simple enough. The why is a bit more complicated though. The Internet is historically a new phenomenon, social networks are an even newer one. Questions regarding privacy and the right to that has been popping up all over the Internet these past years, apparently on-line privacy is not a given.

I disagree. Allow me to sketch some scenarios for you.

Two Services, Two Expectations

Let us look at two current services, Facebook and Twitter.

Both are soclial networking services that have expectations concerning them. Facebook is a network where you can build a friend base, and where your friends can see your profile. Most people restrict their profiles so that only their friends can see it. The expectation here is that your content on Facebook is semi private.

Twitter, on the other hand, is less social – more network. You can have followers, and your 140character tweets are public. You can choose to restrict your tweets to be only visible to people who follow you. The expectation with Twitter is that your tweets are public.

Demanding access to your services.

Recently we interviewed candidates for a position at our company. One of my colleagues suggested we look them up on Facebook before we interview them. At first I thought this was a good idea, but on second thought I did not do this. I decided against this because of the following thought experiment:

If your employer, or future employer, wanted to read your mail, what would your knee-jerk reaction be? I am talking snail-mail here. Or wanted to listen to your phonecalls, on your home line.

What about your gmail account? Should you provide your login details for your email accounts with your CV?

Why then is Facebook a special case?

Bosses banned from checking Facebook

The Hindustan Times reports that a proposed law will ban prospective employers from looking at your Facebook profile before you go for an interview. This is in Germany. Read that story HERE.

If a person elects to place his life in the public domain, with a personal website, by opening his Facebook Profile to everyone or by tweeting personal things on Twitter, so be it. But there is a valid expectation that if you make something private it should remain private.

The internet doesn’t forget either. Googles Eric Schmidt said he expected todays children would try and change their identities when they get older to try and mitigate the impact of the on-line record of their rebellious youth.

Imagine you have a night of drunken tweeting, and a few years later you apply for a job and this gets discovered by the recruitment agency. Sky.com has the story on that.

According to this piece, recruiters are already saying that this won’t work, that a “gap” in your online history would be “investigated at interview.” The question would be: “What are you hiding?”

Summary – How employers look at MySpace and Facebook pages

I leave you with this article on HUBPAGES.COM. Employers can access content you place on-line in the public domain, and fire you for it. If one of your managers is a “Friend” on Facebook, they can access your private data and you can get into trouble for it.

I would support any law that protects my private online life against the snooping of my employer or future employer.

Note to future employers – please inform me if you want to access my on-line data pre interview. This will afford me the opportunity to retract my application, and notify my industry contacts of such practices.

I leave you with this poll Question, just to see what you think:

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