
Colleges and Employers Demanding Facebook Passwords - aspir
http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/06/10585353-govt-agencies-colleges-demand-applicants-facebook-passwords
======
raganwald
Here’s what I said the last time around:

First, I consider this the equivalent of asking to record conversations I have
with my friends. If you as an employer think that it’s part of your business
to eavesdrop on my friendships and romances, then we know where we stand and I
will be over here working with someone else.

Second, I can’t give you my FB credentials even if I wanted to. The reason is
that by doing so, I am violating the privacy expectations of other people, who
do not expect that the things they share with me in private messages or on
their wall or photos will be shared with my employer.

I have a similar arrangement with the person I date. She is welcome to ask me
about my FB and email, however she is not allowed to rifle through it at will
because other people may have an expectation of privacy in things they have
emailed me.

~~~
gxs
This may work for you now, and I stand my ground the same way, the reason this
is so alarming is because eventually, EVERY employer may ask this and then you
simply won't have a choice.

I am curious, however, what will happen to people who really don't have a
facebook. I've never had an account, would they believe me or assume I deleted
it?

~~~
raganwald
_Eventually, EVERY employer may ask this and then you simply won't have a
choice_

Two hours later, here is what I sincerely suggest you say:

    
    
      The people I interact with have an expectation of privacy around the things
      they share on FB with me, or even the fact that we know each other.
    
      When I come to work here, you will have certain expectations about my discretion
      and ability to respect the company’s need for privacy and my co-worker’s needs
      for privacy by not sharing things I see, hear, or are privy to with a third party,
      even—or especially—if I am offered a financial inducement such as an attractive
      offer of employment with a company I respect.
    
      I therefore ask you to recognize that I am giving my friends and family the exact
      same expectation of privacy that you can reply on from me once I join your firm.
    

I don’t think that’s smarmy or righteous, it’s just good old-fashioned golden
rule stuff, and you are demonstrating your integrity. There will be a certain
number of companies who ask to shoulder-surf your facebook, and I will guess
that some of them will back down if you say those words to them and mean it.

JM2C, of course, I am not qualified to give career advice.

------
nokcha
An employer or college who obtains an applicant's Facebook password and uses
that password to access the applicant's Facebook account may be committing a
federal crime under 18 U.S.C. 1030 (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, prohibiting
access of protected computer systems without authorization or in excess of
authorization). (Note that the Facebook Terms of Service prohibit sharing
one's password or logging in under another's account.) See
[http://volokh.com/2011/12/01/judge-orders-plaintiff-to-
give-...](http://volokh.com/2011/12/01/judge-orders-plaintiff-to-give-
defendant-her-facebook-password-so-defendant-can-access-plaintiffs-account-as-
part-of-discovery/) (noting that such access may be a federal crime even if
authorized by a state court order).

The statute (18 U.S.C. 1030) also creates a civil remedy; Facebook may be able
to sue employers who access an applicant's account. Even if the statute is
held to not apply in such situations (or held to be unconstitutional as
applied in such situations [1]), Facebook may still be able to sue under state
law for inducing said applicants to breach their contract with Facebook
(tortious inteference) by sharing their password.

[1] E.g., see _U.S. v. Lori Drew_ , 259 F.R.D. 449 (C.D. Cal. 2009), where a
district court held that 18 U.S.C. 1030 criminalized TOS violations (including
falsifying one's date of birth) but was unconstitutional in that regard.

~~~
tibbon
interesting. I wonder why no one has tried this yet.

~~~
pmorici
If someone is dumb enough to give up their Facebook password I doubt they are
well versed on the case law surrounding Federal computer crimes.

~~~
fletchowns
Ignorant maybe, but not dumb.

------
SMrF
And then the article requires a Facebook account to comment.

"Hey look, we're quickly aggregating all of our personal data into one
centralized place creating an obviously appealing target for authority as
evidenced by this recent trend of college sports programs invading the privacy
of students. Let's all talk about it on Facebook."

~~~
jgrahamc
Yes, this is one of the worst trends right now. It's one of the primary
reasons I killed my Facebook account and null routed all Facebook on my home
network.

Any site that requires Facebook as a login or comment function is dead to me.

~~~
RexRollman
I feel the same way, which makes me lucky that I opened a Spotify account when
I did.

------
modeless
Any employer who does this would leave themselves wide open to lawsuits based
on anti-discrimination laws, as there's no way you can troll someone's private
Facebook profile without learning protected information such as age, religion,
national origin, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, etc.

------
ttt_
Social media is becoming the main agent of a police state in a frightenly
quick pace. I'm starting to think that the only reason these practices were
not so common before was because of a technical barrier, and not because our
rights were once valued.

Putting bugs in your phone and residence is difficult, requires technical
expertise and people to actually monitor. So well, what can you do? Like the
article says, the option was to educate. But then comes social media and kills
the technical barrier, so great, lets spy on our students, candidates, etc,
and have them give us clearence to do so through intimidation.

We never had those rights to begin with, spying was just more of a hassle then
than it is now.

Now begins the real fight for those rights. If we fail, then we are left with
a _socialitariam-regime_ and forced to keep using some hypocritical-media in
order to be able to get jobs/loans/etc while we keep private matters offline
(until new technology breaks that barrier too).

~~~
yuhong
IMO the solution is to fix the root social/cultural causes. Get rid of the
illusion that people are perfect, for example.

~~~
ericb
This won't work in practice. Any situation with many equally qualified people
competing for a very small number of spots becomes what amounts to a beauty
pageant. What I mean by "beauty pageant" is that since every candidate is so
well-qualified, any superficial imperfection begins to be treated as a useful
criteria for selection.

When all worthwhile criteria are equal, worthless criteria are used to decide.

"This guy swore in a facebook post, so lets go with the other guy."

~~~
yuhong
Yea I know, one of the reasons anti-discrimination laws are fundamentally
flawed. Fixing the root social/cultural causes is a better idea.

------
X-Istence
I would laugh in their faces so hard, and just turn around and walk away. I am
neither handing over, nor logging in for my bosses to see.

I've had a post that I accidentally made public on my Facebook come back to
bite me in the ass, and it won't happen ever again.

~~~
JackC
A friend of mine is a doctor. One day she refused to perform a dangerous
procedure for a patient. The procedure had already failed once, and she knew
for a fact if it didn't work the first time it wouldn't work this time either.
The patient insisted that she do the procedure anyway. He turned out to be a
big donor, and a hospital administrator told my friend that she could either
do it or lose her job. She wasn't doing that well financially at the time, and
had three kids to feed at home. Put yourself in her shoes. You're staring in
the administrator's face. There's a 3% chance this procedure will kill the
patient, and a 0% chance it will help him. What do you do?

I hope you'd walk away, and I hope I would too. But my point is, it's easy to
say what your ethics are, and a lot harder to act ethically in the moment.
Doing that little thing you were sure you would never do is so easy when your
boss is staring at you, or your coworker needs you to cover their ass, or you
stand to make an extra $20k a year if you get this job, or whatever.

My friend said she realized that day that in order to be a good doctor, you
have to always know, at any given moment, that you might just have to walk
away. You have to be ready.

I'm not a doctor, but it's a rule I've taken to heart.

~~~
smacktoward
That's a lesson they're supposed to teach you in medical school: _primum non
nocere_ , "first, do no harm."
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere>)

~~~
d0mine

      - do no harm to your kids
      - do no harm to some stranger
    

Pick one.

~~~
sukuriant
Expound on that. Why stops us from not doing harm to both?

~~~
zevyoura
"She wasn't doing that well financially at the time, and had three kids to
feed at home."

~~~
sukuriant
... I'm an idiot that got lost in the tree of comments

~~~
sp332
you can still delete that comment, in the next hour.

------
bilbo0s
I'm just going to repost a comment I made during an HN thread on trolling
here:

"....However, on a general note, I think it is important to realize that every
text message you send, every cell phone conversation you have, every post to
the CNN forum you make, every tweet you send ... is directly attributable to
your IP whether you use your own name or not. With Facebook and Google
tracking everything you do, whether you are logged in or not, I would go one
step further, and say all of these things are directly attributable to you
personally.

I would strongly urge young people to really think about what they are putting
out there. Consider this, the military was doing the equivalent of credit
checks for sensitive positions during the 60s. Now you need a credit check to
do ANYTHING, even things that don't require credit. How long before an
internet and phone background check is standard in the background checks
organizations do before offering jobs?

I can tell you the military is doing this sort of screening right now for
sensitive positions, but at least you are confronted about it. It still
basically ends your career, but they will give you a chance to explain your
posts. In the private sector in the future, they will just deep six your
application and you won't know what happened. Or they'll let you in at entry
level, maybe, and subsequently you'll start running up against an invisible
barrier as you try to advance beyond the first or second layer of management.
Or you will find resistance to you advancing into management at all.

Also be mindful, it can affect more than your professional life. Think about
what the background checks for apartments will look like in the 2020s. Or what
'dating sites' will be like in the 2020s.

Please consider your future before you make comments on ... say ... black
people and Hurricane Katrina ... that might be misconstrued. Or post an
opinion on ... say ... American soldiers in Afghanistan ... that could be
taken out of context and viewed in a negative light.

All that said, the absolute best defense against these sorts of situations is
just not to be a douche, which isn't very hard..."

\----

I think that comment is apropos here as well. I encourage all of the young
people I work with, as often as I can, to be careful about what comments they
put ANYWHERE on the internet. To be mindful of what they say during ANY cell
phone conversation. And to try to limit their use of text messaging.

I know this sucks, but this stuff is serious...these things WILL affect your
future.

~~~
Karunamon
>I know this sucks, but this stuff is serious...these things WILL affect your
future.

I think I remember this post.. I also recall posting a link to an XKCD that
greatly sums up my feelings on the matter.

~~~
sukuriant
Repost xkcd article..?

~~~
Karunamon
<http://xkcd.com/137/>

------
billpg
"Sure. My password is
=rk#C0|q7_Mf@zrtf'XnM/'2C3ZTJ1[*/>)1Wk(sr&+z0pEG/}jmN_3[jI:jp( I'll write it
down for you on a piece of paper."

"Yes, that's really my password. High security. Don't you have a secure
password like that? You really should you know."

"It didn't work? Are you sure you typed it in correctly? Try it again."

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Personally, I'd write my password in an obscure Unicode-supported script that
is unavailable in most fonts.

~~~
pjscott
Be sure you go outside the Basic Multilingual Plane. A lot of software runs
into weird bugs when you use characters that can't be represented in 16 bits
in UTF-16. Bonus points if it uses bidirectional control characters.

~~~
chimeracoder
You might as well add a few 'drop table;'s in there, just in case. That way,
if/when your potential employers accidentally wipe the databases at Facebook
(or wherever they happen to be invading your privacy), they'll have _two_
lawsuits on their hands!

(The first being the one you file for an invasion of privacy, of course).

------
lukeschlather
>Shear has gotten the attention of Maryland state legislators, who have
proposed two separate bills aimed at banning social media access by schools
and potential employers.

Why is this specifically targeted at social media? No one should request
copies of people's private keys as part of any routine interview process. This
is no different from asking for a copy of someone's PO box key, and the law
should also clearly say that that is illegal (if it isn't already?)

~~~
akdetrick
I'm no less disturbed by this than anyone else, but you do not truly own your
Facebook account in the way that you would own a PO box.

Your data belongs to Facebook, not to you. Sad, but true.

Edit: (submitted too soon) I'm sure there's something legally dubious about
requesting private keys in this way, but the PO box example was a clear
reminder to me about how we wrongly think of our data on private services as
"ours".

~~~
lukeschlather
Really, I think I'm being charitable towards the schools with my
interpretation. If we look at it from the "Facebook owns your data"
perspective, then you have no right to give them your keys even if you
honestly want to, because that's against Facebook's TOS and the
employer/school could be charged with felony unauthorized use of computing
resources, aka hacking.

Really, I'm probably trying to hard. This is phishing, plain and simple, and
should be treated as such.

------
achompas
For those who don't click through, the article's title is supremely
misleading. There are only anecdotes about corrections departments and college
athletics. But hoooooly crap this little gem:

 _Social media monitoring on colleges, while spreading quickly among athletic
departments, seems to be limited to athletes at the moment. There's nothing
stopping schools from applying the same policies to other students, however._

Look, college athletics has a lot of issues. Colleges secure all economic
benefits associated with player performance in exchange for a college
scholarship (I hope O'Bannon v. NCAA solves that problem soon). [0]

But how can anyone extrapolate requirements from college athletes to the
entire student body? Would any Ivy School dream of asking an applicant for
their password, when said applicant's mother might be a partner at a law firm?
What about the constitutional issues regarding the same request from a public
university (funded by taxpayer money)?

[0] [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-
sham...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-
college-sports/8643/?single_page=true)

------
sdfjkl
There can and must be only one answer to such a request: "You want WHAT!? Are
you joking?"

If they weren't joking, walk out immediately, stating why. Warn others.

I could and would never work in a place where a "social network username and
password" field has made it as far as the application process, even if it
isn't mandatory (yet). And neither should you.

------
Lukeas14
So glad I work in an industry where I'm comfortable saying no if asked for my
Facebook login, knowing I can then go talk to the next company down the
street. I can't imagine being in the position where my college scholarship or
only job opportunity I may have for 3 months is at risk unless I provide my
superiors with access to my most private conversations.

------
mindcrime
The next (which would be the first) employer who asks me for information of
that nature will be politely asked to perform a variety of degrading sexual
acts with themselves, various farm animals, and several types of construction
equipment and power tools.

When I get done laughing, I'll happily write down my 'password' for them: if
they have any shame, they'll be beet red when they get done reading it.

OK, I _probably_ won't get the job, but that's OK since it's clearly somewhere
I wouldn't actually have wanted to work anyway.

Seriously, this whole notion is so asinine that it's almost beyond belief. I
mean, why not just ask me for a copy of the key to my PO box, a copy of my car
key, permission to tap my phone, and access to put a camera in my living room?
Get real, people...

------
tomjen3
Great, now I have to go unfriend everybody who might be willing to hand over
their access since they would otherwise allow others to see what I have
written.

------
carbocation
> All this scrutiny is too much for Bradley Shear, a Washington D.C.-lawyer
> who says both schools and employers are violating the First Amendment with
> demands for access to otherwise private social media content.

> "I can't believe some people think it's OK to do this,” he said. “Maybe it's
> OK if you live in a totalitarian regime, but we still have a Constitution to
> protect us. It's not a far leap from reading people's Facebook posts to
> reading their email. ... As a society, where are we going to draw the line?"

Surely they are misquoting this lawyer, or did the First Amendment start
applying to corporations all of a sudden?

~~~
orbd
Considering he is referencing the Maryland Dept of Corrections and the
University of Virginia, a public institution, I'd say the 1st Amendment
applies. UNC is also a public university and is mentioned prominently.

------
brador
I love how, even without a constitution, things like this would never fly in
Europe, yet here in the US, WITH a constitution, we get these events taking
place.

It's almost like the existence of the constitution encourages challenges to
privacy. The "if you had a defense but didn't use it then you must be okay
with what's happening" thinking.

~~~
keithpeter
In UK we have the Criminal Records Bureau who provide a full record check for
people in certain occupations (working with children, prison/police/uniformed
services &c)

<http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/agencies-public-bodies/crb/>

I have three current CRB 'disclosures' as I worked for three employers for a
brief period last year. A full disclosure is not limited to convictions but
can include cautions and other information that the police may have. Bit more
concrete than some prison manager having a quick look at a facebook profile.

"Aside from the free speech concerns, Shear also thinks colleges take on
unnecessary liability when they aggressively monitor student posts."

Yes, I'd have thought there was a huge vicarious liability/duty of care issue
with this. I _don't want to know_ what my students put on their facebook
accounts!

"Goemann also noted that the rush to social media monitoring raises an often
overlooked legal concern: It's against Facebook's Terms of Service."

That occurred to me as well as soon as I read past the first few sentences.
Many people on this forum provide Web services. Do you actually have any
way/interest in enforcing this aspect of the typical ToS or is it just there
as some kind of protection for you?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _It's against Facebook's Terms of Service._ //

That would be my initial objection too. There's no real point in going beyond
that. If the FB ToS have any legal weight then it would be most likely
unlawful for me to share my FB login details with anyone.

An employer who attempted to do that and then sacked you would be performing
constructive dismissal and probably be in breach of the [letter of the]
Computer Misuse Act for attempting to gain access to a computer system without
proper authorisation.

A company that followed through and consulted your FB would then be holding
private information on your friends and there are all sorts of regulations
that they're supposed to comply with then. Presumably they'd also be in breach
of the European Convention of Human Rights @ Art.8 (at least).

TBH it sound quite fun. One could create a FB profile as a honey-trap - access
would provide the evidence for a willing barrister to take a large company to
the cleaners ... or that's how it seems.

IANAL needless to say.

------
CPops
* It goes without saying that a request for access to personal data like this is something that nobody should ever comply with.

* Asking somebody for access to their email/social network account is actually a great question to ask in a job interview. If somebody is so careless about their private data to easily give away access to it upon request, that would easily disqualify them in my book.

------
dmils4
This is unbelievable. With all of these studies showing up that
employers/schools use public social media channels to make a decision on
applicants, this is way over the top.

Hopefully this ends fast.

~~~
tomjen3
It is worse than that -- say you are friends with some former coworkers on
facebook (because well, you actually like them) and they then show some other
company their facebook page while interviewing there. They might or might not
hire them, but even if they do, they have seen private stuff that you might
cause them to not hire you.

~~~
maxerickson
Your 'friend' could gossip about you without even using a computer.

------
unimpressive
Honestly. I learned the hard way that you can't take back what you say on the
net. No matter how young you may have been when you said it, or how you meant
it when it was first written. If it can be misconstrued, it's there for all
eternity.

It's to the point where I think you could almost start one of those hipster
movements I'm always hearing about. Give it a sophisticated name like
Entropism. Set an example by running around the Internet behind seven proxies,
inside a virtual machine, with JS disabled, running firefox, with a fake user
agent, going over each one of your posts with a style-analysis program and
dataset, clearing most history every five minutes, blocking cookies,
deliberately messing with the response times of your hardware to prevent
device fingerprinting, spoofing your MAC, etc etc.

------
jgamman
this is a business opportunity - curate some fb pages within a network with
believable handles (ie, jj334) and then just sell them to a recent grad that
wants a fb profile that looks squeaky clean. try not to put too many 'saved
4,000 kittens' links or it'll get suspicious... ;-) but seriously - scrubbing
your youthful indiscretions from the goog or fb is a high-value service at a
point in time where people realise they need it. btw i'm not saying the OP is
right, i think it's a terrible precendent and i'd have told them to @#$@#$
off.

------
smacktoward
"Before we hire you, we'd like you to make a copy of your house keys for us.
You know, so we can check in occasionally and make sure you're not doing
anything that would make The Company look bad..."

------
joezydeco
I wonder if I could, in return, ask for a company's accounts payable queue and
bank balance.

I mean, how do I know that this company is trustworthy? Are they paying their
bills on time? Is there cash in the bank?

------
aspir
I was a college athlete back in the day, and my athletic department tried to
do something similar -- they would make shell accounts controlled by
athletics/ncaa compliance and try to friend whole teams. We got around it by
having a shared block list of the shells. If I recall correctly, we had 20 at
a given time.

But, our team was small (30 people), and not in the "money sports" (football,
basketball, baseball), so we could get away with this. Larger teams in higher
profile sports won't be able to do this.

------
epochwolf
You have to be kidding me. This kind of violation of privacy is
unconscionable.

------
16s
What about those of us who have no Facebook account?

~~~
astrodust
I can't wait for a service to pop up where for $500 they will make you an
amazing, sterling Facebook account you can "share" with people. It will be
populated with believable postings from other people you know, yet all of
these other people will be cardboard cut-outs.

~~~
WiseWeasel
My cousin and I came up with a similar idea; we called it Fakebook, and then
promptly went on to forget about it. There's gold in them there hills, though!

------
vibrunazo
This gives me an idea of how to understand a developer's integrity and views
on privacy before hiring. Ask them if they're ok with giving you their
facebook account. But don't really ask for it. If they ask "so should I write
down my password". You just say "I don't really want your account, just wanted
to know if you were ok with it".

~~~
rfrey
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment>

Only illegal if you're a law enforcement officer in most developed countries.
But unethical even if you're not.

~~~
Dylan16807
What? It's not a request to commit a crime, it's a check of the strength of
their belief in privacy. There's nothing wrong with the action you're asking
_them_ to do.

------
jackcviers
IANAL, but: It's easy, "Just Say No." If they really want the information,
they'll get it somehow or refuse you employment, at which point they may open
themselves for a lawsuit involving discrimination based upon race/sex/creed
and/or privacy violation and/or libel and/or slander, which will net you more
money than if you had accepted the job in the first place. If everyone in an
industry begins to refuse you based on your privacy standards, you may be able
to sue based on suspicion of collusion.

On a humorous note, if personal lives are a deciding factor in whom a business
chooses to employ over and above other, skills-based qualifications, the job
you are applying to is likely very easy, and thus the kind of job that robots
will be doing soon.

------
joelrunyon
If you're going in for an interview and now this is a requirement, why don't
you just deactivate your account and tell them that.

Then, if you get the job (although I don't think I'd want to work at a place
that's looking over my shoulder constantly), you can reactivate it whenever
you want.

------
mathattack
I'm willing to say for many things, "You don't have to work there if you don't
want to" but this particular issue bothers me. Most firms can Google you, and
find a lot of public Facebook info. If that's not enough, asking for your
password is basically wiretapping a mobile phone for which you make no
business calls. It's VERY hard to live with this.

I'm struggling to come up with any justification. About all I can fathom is a
world in which they have to prove 100% that you're not insider trading. But if
they need your Facebook to prove this, this need to tap your personal phone #
and read all your snailmail too. And every personal email account.

Wow this is depressing.

------
mcos
Who's to know whether or not Facebook is considering plans to monetize this
sort of behaviour by offerring institutions you have listed on your profile
the opportunity to see everything you have listed for a fee.

~~~
didgeoridoo
Considering that if this practice were revealed, it would cause a total
collapse in Facebook's user base and thus its revenue engine... unlikely, to
say the least.

~~~
DanBC
Most people don't care about privacy violations. That's especially true of the
Facebook userbase, because if they did care they would not be Facebook users.

Seriously, most people will say things like "I don't have anything to hide so
it doesn't bother me".

~~~
dinkumthinkum
This always comes up and I think everytime, if people knew they would care.
Most people really do want to hide things, I promise. They probably even want
to hide things from you, specifically; I promise. The problem is really just,
as another user said, awareness.

~~~
DanBC
I don't know. In the UK there are two recent issues that might be relevant.

i) National ID cards. These failed not because of (well publicised) privacy
concerns, or because people didn't want to have to carry an ID card, but
because the government said that cards would cost > £100 for most people.

ii) National Criminal DNA database. The UK has a huge DNA database, and it
used to include profiles from people who had been arrested but never charged
nor convicted. A court of human rights said that it's abuse to keep those
indefinitely; government offered 12 years but that was reduced to (I think) 6
years. Many people said they didn't care if they were on the database, saying
that they were innocent and that if it helps the police they'd volunteer.
(Missing the problem of false positives and having to keep too much data).

For both of these things there were active campaign groups warning about the
risks, but many people just didn't seem to care.

------
orbitingpluto
Meanwhile I am trying to read the article and having problems doing so because
ghostery keeps on popping up notifications of adblocking.

I might aquiesce to a FB access request as long as I was also given access to
all emails, phone calls, SIN numbers, banking information and sexual habits of
the Deans or CEO of the institution. That seems fair, considering I never use
FB.

------
fragsworth
As a Facebook game developer, all of our employees are friends with everyone
in the company. We wouldn't require any of our employees to do this but so far
none have complained. I think, however, that someone who didn't friend us
would somehow be alienated from the rest of the company. I don't know how a
situation like that should be properly handled.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
This is your reaction to this? Really? I wouldn't comment except that you say
you're a Facebook game developer; it's like being a part of the problem. If
anything, I would think the FB dev community and FB itself should make
statements stating that they publicly disagree with how organizations are
using their services to abuse their users and that is highly unethical. I
prefer that to tacit acceptance, personally.

------
int3rnaut
For those struggling with privacy concerns, I have a very workable (albeit
ugly) simple solution to this problem that actually works: Create a second
Facebook account.

You'll likely have to make other provisions--but if it's really a big deal,
it's not that difficult or taxing, really. Plus you can have a bit of fun
creating your fake you for these types of things.

------
Chrono
Insanity. I would never in my life willingly give up any of my passwords, to
anyone. Especially not something that contains so much private information as
Facebook. Sure, Facebook themselves may share some of that information, or all
if asked by a court but generally speaking it is somewhat safe.

Want my Facebook password? No thank you, I will go somewhere else.

------
Sniffnoy
It's worth noting that the "you have to add the coach as a friend" strategy
has a hole in it now that Facebook has the "restricted" list, allowing you to
apparently add someone as a friend without actually giving them any access. Of
course, Facebook is so terrible to navigate that I'd bet most users don't even
know this exists.

------
ggwicz
This is disgusting. But be thankful for it: if a company or school does this,
they're letting you know immediately that they're the type of soul-crushing
institution that you wouldn't want to associate with in _any fucking way_.
That could save you a lot of time, at least. (have to look at the bright
side!)

------
dinkumthinkum
This doesn't make any sense. What if I don't have any social media, in fact,
how do you even know that I do and that it that account searched, is, in fact,
me. Why don't you also ask me to surrender my cell phone and dig through all
my text messages; why not read my email and look in my bathroom as well?

------
prophetjohn
Pretty glad I work in an industry that's hard up for talent enough that I can
walk out of an interview if I'm ever asked this, you guys.

Not that I use Facebook or have used it in the past enough that there's
anything on there I wouldn't want any given person to see, but this is some
bullshit business.

------
tibbon
Easy answer, is to either say "I'm not on Facebook" or simply give them access
to a fake account. Everyone should be setting their Facebook settings to be
reasonably strict so that they would have a damn hard time telling you have
another profile.

------
lmarinho
Is there a running list of companies/colleges that engage in this kind of
practice? I'd like to know to keep my distance from them. Since they are so
keen on invading other peoples privacies I gather they wouldn't mind being
exposed on this issue.

------
dlikhten
FUNNY: Friending a coach will have ZERO implication in Google+. Because
there's no "Friend" post. It's by circles or with specific people.

Privacy by default.

Also my facebook answer is "i don't have one at the moment" and I wouldn't use
my real name on facebook.

------
dangoldin
If only no one actually succumbed to the demands. Then the colleges and
employers would have no choice but to reverse the decision. Unfortunately,
those who agree to this will coerce others to do the same.

Talk about a perverse network effect.

------
samstave
While I don't have a facebook account, I would never give an employer ANY
account credentials to ANY external service that was not theirs.

~~~
cahrens
I wouldn't even give them the password to accounts I have on their systems,
they should be able to access it themselves if the requester really has
permission to view that data. The only exception I would make is to encrypted
hard drives that they gave to me, but I would just de-crypt before ever giving
them my password.

~~~
samstave
Exactly.

It's like if any company asked you for this info - I would ask for access to
the CEO's email - or the financial drive and tell them that in order to work
there, you'll need to perform an audit of their ethics and finances to ensure
your not engaging in a relationship with a criminal organization.

------
dreamdu5t
We sounded the same alarm when employers started drug testing, and the
majority of people defended the practice. "It's not a civil liberty issue,
it's about employers protecting themselves. Only drug addicts oppose drug
testing."

How is this any different than drug testing employees?

------
funkah
I've noticed a lot of people on Facebook who use nicknames or "first name plus
some other word" instead of their real names. I imagine this is intended to
keep anyone from searching their real name with Google or Facebook and finding
that profile. But it's a short step from that, to having two or more Facebook
accounts, one to be the person's "public face" and the rest for the actual
things people do on Facebook.

------
horsehead
I really enjoy seeing these social media articles. I got in trouble with my
employer for a post on a friends social media page that my employer found out
about (a coworker was trying to get me fired, it turns out) and threatened me
with firing. The post was unrelated to work, but they deemed it as reflecting
poorly on the company.

learn the hard way I suppose? in any case, I still feel that social media
sites are plagued by abuse by third parties.

------
drhowarddrfine
So does law enforcement. Apply to be a cop, as my son is doing as I type this,
be prepared to hand over your passwords so they can check your Facebook page
out.

------
gcb
Really are we discussing msn articles now?

But to give perspective here: this is for college athletes. Nothing new.

Those people, usually, agree to several freedom limitations, such as ridicule
curfews and sex life control before games and such.

I doubt one more freedom limitation is any concern.

About the fears of it leaking to other jobs, well they are doing that for
decades and you still have to hear your manager saying the curfew today will
be 3pm cuz he do not want you making sex before the launch tomorrow.

~~~
dacilselig
I understand that msn articles can contain sensationalism and may not contain
the most accurate facts, however let's not make a hasty generalization.
Freedom limitations such a curfew and sex life control, are by design there to
limit the person's physical behavior, where being forced to provide your
password to your social media account, an area where you feel that you can
speak freely as a person, has nothing to do with trying to increase one's
physical performance. To me, this just seem's to be a way to protect their
institution. For example, It get's leaked that their QB believes in the
Communism movement, which could reflect poorly on the school. This goes
against progress as we are judging athletes based on their believes and not
their athletic abilities. I find that the issue is more complicated than it
just being something athletes should adapt to since they agree to give up
certain freedoms when they join a team.

