Given the current mass use of social networks, recruiters increasingly follow the activities of job applicants on Facebook, Twitter and other sites. Applicants, on the other hand, increasingly restrict access to their profiles on social networks to unknown persons. The result is that recruiters are starting to require job applicants to reveal their usernames and passwords. When they do not directly want to know the password, they ask applicants to log in their profiles during job interviews or to add the recruiter as a friend.
The American media agency AP informed about these practices on the Business Week website. According to an AP, the passwords to profiles on social networks are requested mainly by the U.S. public and state institutions whose activities are related to law enforcement. Typical examples include police officers or 911 emergency dispatchers.
Job appicants usually consider the request a privacy interference, but they often reveal their passwords because they need the work. U.S. laws do not expressly prohibit such behaviour. However, bills to prohibit public institutions to ask the access to the accounts of job applicants on social networks have already been submitted in the states of Illinois and Maryland.
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