If an employer asks for your Facebook login info

[Shankapotomus]

ask for theirs in return. That includes the owner, ceo, president and other chief officers of the company, including the interviewer asking you, if it's a new job you're applying for.

If they say "no", ask "Why not?" If they are dumb enough to reply "Because it's my personal information", which they'll have to be pretty dumb to say, just quip back "Oh, so now you know how I feel." That's an old Seinfeld joke you may recognize.


If you want to be more serious, tell them you find it a bit hypocritical of the management of a company to demand login information to the facebook accounts of others while not providing the same access to the people they are demanding it from. After all, the kind of people I am working for is just as important as the kind of people who are working for you and a job interview is a two way street.

Don't be afraid to remind them of that. They've seem to have forgotten.

[LiberalFighter]

1. Considering that most states have at-will employment

which means either party can terminate the employment relation.

[Ter]

2. I'd just lie and say I didn't have one

Then I'd quickly go home and suspend the account. Easy way out.

[Shankapotomus]

9. If you're going to do that

I would deactivate the account before you go on interviews.

[markpkessinger]

14. You had better do so weeks or months in advance of the interview...

...because copies of things have a way of showing up on backup servers or even mirror sites, and may stay on those sites for many months after you deactivate your Facebook account, and can readily be picked up by a Google search.

[Shankapotomus]

17. That's true

though there is a way to remove from google's cached pages quickly.

[JHB]

3. I'm more inclined to argue along the lines of...

...if I'm willing to give up my own personal information like that, how trustworthy could I be with your company's information?

But so far that's pretty hypothetical for me, and how I'd answer in real life might depend on how desperate I was for source of income.

[Chan790]

4. I have a dummy account for this purpose.

It says I love kittens and my job. I have no hobbies, interests and I post something banal weekly.

[hughee99]

5. You could always ask them if it's company policy to

act with integrity, to keep confidential information from those who do not have clearance to have it, and to honor all legal agreements.

If they say yes, and I expect they will, tell them you're just the person they're looking for, which is why you won't give up your password.

[markpkessinger]

15. I like it ... but most H/R types would probably fail to appreciate the creative humor in it! n/t

[HughBeaumont]

6. "No, that would be a violation of federal compliance laws that you're supposed to abide by."

http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/glbact/glbsub1.htm#6802

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-03-25/news/31237742_1_facebook-password-job-seekers-employers

" . . . Or is this whole thing a one-way street?"

[MineralMan]

7. You might just as well simply walk out of the interview.

You aren't getting that job. It's very wrong for companies to do this, but some will try. Eventually, they won't be allowed to ask for such information, but until that happens applicants aren't going to get those jobs if they aren't willing to comply.

Since most hiring is done by HR departments or HR outsourcers these days, the owners or managers of these companies don't see the applicants that are screened out with crap like this. They won't even know that they're losing potentially excellent employees. So, telling the HR person this stuff will do approximately nothing to change the situation. HR doesn't care, to be quite frank, and there are plenty of people who will just let them have the info.

This will require laws prohibiting such invasions of privacy.

[IDemo]

11. Civil action is much more likely than legislation in the near term

But it may have to come from a prospective employee rather than Facebook, which announced its intention to sue and staged an immediate turn-around. As a signee of the FB user agreement (a legal contract), a user has excellent grounds for civil action if a third party attempts to interfere with that contract. One may want a written statement from the employer concerning the demand, though.

Facebook could also nip the practice pretty quickly by simply terminating the pages of said employers.

[markpkessinger]

16. You might also ask the employer . . .

. . . if the company knowingly hires people whom they know to be willing to violate legal agreements to which they are subject. My guess most would greet such a question with a rather indignant, "Of course not!" You can then explain that if you were to give them your password, and if subsequently they were to hire you, they would, in fact, have hired someone whom they knew to have willfully violated a legal agreement, namely, the Terms of Service agreement to which every user agrees when he or she signs up.

[felix_numinous]

8. Everyone should

start creating puppet facebook pages and give them the passwords to them. Two can play this game.

[kudzu22]

12. My thoughts exactly

Fill it with dummy posts about how late you've been working and how many deadlines you meet. Two can play at this game.

[quinnox]

10. "Oh, I'm not on Facebook. Not into the social networks thing"

That is my answer to any snoopy would be employer asking me about my facebook account. Yep, I'd lie right to their face, because it ain't none of their damn business.

[kudzu22]

13. Say, "Ok, and what if someone on Facebook asks me for my password to your network?"

[jeff47]

18. Just put something on your Facebook page that indicates you're part of a protected class.

Then if they don't hire you, you can get a nice payday.