Facebook chief privacy officer: ‘You should never have to share your password’

The social network speaks out against employers asking for passwords.

Ragan Insider Premium Content
Ragan Insider Content

As I travel the country and spend time with business leaders, it’s very disturbing to me how many have firewalls prevent their employees from using the social networks during business hours.

As if they aren’t just using their phones to get online during the day. Some business leaders go so far as to take phones away as soon as a person walks in the door to prevent even that.

I really don’t understand it. Unless you’re running a daycare for adults, is the trust level so low you can’t expect they’ll get their jobs done if they spend 10 minutes on Facebook during the day? We can allow smoke breaks, but not social media breaks.

It blows my mind, but I didn’t think it could get worse.

And then I read about some companies requiring employees to hand over their social network passwords in order to get hired.

This reminds me of companies that read people’s emails, looking for reasons to fire them. This happened to a friend of mine who sent an email to a recruiter from her Hotmail account, and her company fired her.

It didn’t happen to me and I felt betrayed for her. And, really, who has the time?

To read the full story, log in.
Become a Ragan Insider member to read this article and all other archived content.
Sign up today

Already a member? Log in here.
Learn more about Ragan Insider.