Bill Banning Employer Requests for Facebook Passwords Reaches the House

[snakeair]

Some news to check out.

At the end of March, we learned members of the United States Congress were looking into drafting a bill that would bar employers from asking potential hires for private login information for their Facebook accounts. States had been instituting laws on their own, but after more and more stories came out about people feeling pressured to hand over their private information by someone in the position of giving them a job, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal said enough was enough — this is something that needs to be dealt with on a national level. And now, the Social Networking Online Protection Act has made it to the House of Representatives while the Senate continues to work on its own version. Important question: Do we get to call it SNOPA? I’m going to call it SNOPA.

SNOPA was introduced on Friday by Reps. Eliot Engel (NY) and Jan Schakowsky (Illinois) and would ban employers from requiring someone to hand over their username or password to a social networking account. In case you’re...

Continued at: http://mashable.com/2012/05/01/emplo...s-legislation/

Please share your thoughts on this bill?

[PK-Host]

About time! Its absurd that companies would even think of asking for something like that. Even though the privacy settings on Facebook are appauling, they shouldnt have the right to access all the info we spent hours trying to hide through the privacy settings.

[indybail]

I'm curious as to why all of sudden potential employers were asking for social media passwords? In the past no one was being asked for e-mail passwords, voice mail codes or duplicate keys to snail mail boxes.

The only thing I can see is that those things don't go viral, but I can't see what that has to do wanting to access social media accounts over other forms of personal communication.

If employers want to find out personal things about potential employees, I would think picking through their trash cans would be more enlightening.

PS: When I saw this I wondered who Bill Banning was and why was he important. lol

[ScriptMan]

I actually think the bill the good plan. Employers who need security clearance should be the sole exception and they don't need the password anyway.

I do think the bill is misnamed; SNOPE: Silly newbies online posting everything might be a better name.

Wake up people!

[snakeair]

Originally Posted by indybail

I'm curious as to why all of sudden potential employers were asking for social media passwords? In the past no one was being asked for e-mail passwords, voice mail codes or duplicate keys to snail mail boxes.

The only thing I can see is that those things don't go viral, but I can't see what that has to do wanting to access social media accounts over other forms of personal communication.

If employers want to find out personal things about potential employees, I would think picking through their trash cans would be more enlightening.

PS: When I saw this I wondered who Bill Banning was and why was he important. lol

I know my boss's have FB accounts and my company has a FB page besides other social sites. Your boss isn't dumb and most likely knows his employees or the person he is interviewing for a job has one. Besides doing the background check and checking out the resources on the resume, they could look up your name on FB and see what you post on there. Or for current employees, they might want your password to see if you talking smack about your company.

With the privacy settings, you could block everyone out from viewing your FB posts.

I'm all for this bill. What we post on FB is our own business. Employeers should worry about there employee doing there job at work and not what they posting on FB. If my boss asked for my password i'd say no and also i'd ask him for his FB password to see what his reaction would be. lol

Anyways, this is a good bill. FB isn't going to die anytime soon.