Your Secret’s Safe With Us

Perhaps not the best week for this to hit the news:

Job seekers looking to apply for a job in the city of Bozeman, Mont., should be prepared to hand over their usernames and passwords for just about every social networking site they’re on, including Facebook and Twitter.

According to the city officials, employee applicants must sign a waiver giving the city permission to conduct an investigation into the person’s background, which includes handing over social networking login credentials to city administrators.

We’d make an obvious comparison, but we don’t want to risk getting all Hoekstra about it.

Montana City Asks Job Applicants To Fork Over Social Networking Passwords [ChannelWeb]
5 Comments

I think you mean (as per Mikey Steele Style Rulez Yo) You’re secret’s safe wit us.

Your welcum.

But on a lighter note, why would anyone agree? And on a lighter note yet, why would anyone tell anyone else their real alias/password? Oh sure you’re repubhard4boyz (bachmann666) at night but in the daytime you’re Mitch Hardon, city councilperson. You handle the financial matters for the Republican party in the great states of MT, WY, UT, VT, RI and CT. Its not like THEY could pin anything on you cuz you go to church reglar and such as. Unless your cousin/brother Newt bin agrivatin…

OK, I got nothing. Apart from the usual sneer of contempt. And the question: why? Why would anyone agree to hand over such info?

This is why Mrs. Prom insists her name not appear here, and when I mention our busines, I refer to the secret playground. She has been asked for all this information on various government license applications (and she holds regulatory licenses from something like 100 states, countries, and tribes).

@ManchuCandidate: When we first went on strike from Site W, I signed up for the HF Army from Poplar, Montana. I was there for a hearing in the tribal court in the dead of winter.

I saw this over on Consumerist. Several people pointed out that you’d have to violate the terms of service for these places to give out the password. And then there’s the possibility of people obtaining personal financial information through access to google or yahoo accounts.

I think someone noted that the city attorney who approved it is a baby lawyer himself.

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