On Friday, The Daily reported on the development of employers using personal Facebook.com profiles to check out job applicants. Students have since expressed shock and dismay; however, they probably should have seen it coming. With so many juicy personal tidbits posted on Facebook, it was only a matter of time before employers did a little Facebook stalking of their own. Nevertheless, we believe that using Facebook to screen potential candidates is a questionable practice.

Employers: Facebook snooping is

unethical and illegal

In this digital age, employers can easily find out more information about you than you would care to reveal during a job interview. Your future employer can Google you, surf your Web site and read your blog to research more about you. While such extensive background checks are distasteful, they are not illegal. Information posted on Web sites and blogs is public and freely available to all, including nosy corporate recruiters.

Dredging up private information on Facebook, however, is an entirely different matter. Facebook is a Web site expressly set up for personal, noncommercial use. This makes it unethical for employers to find out personal information through Facebook, especially if it involves logging in using the account of a Stanford alumni member.

Because of the restricted access to the Web site (only current students, alumni and community members may log on to Stanford’s Facebook), students feel less inhibited about posting personal information on Facebook than on most other online venues. As a result, employers can find a wealth of sensitive information about job applicants, including their political affiliation and sexual orientation. While asking personal questions about such traits during an interview is illegal, employers can obtain all this information and more on Facebook. Employers could even theoretically use the photographs on the site to screen candidates on the basis of race or looks.

Admittedly, some employers might be surfing Facebook profiles merely to satisfy their curiosity about potential candidates. Perhaps these recruiters are recent Stanford alums; having graduated only a few months ago and still intimately connected to the Stanford community, they want to find out more about a candidate’s interests and inclinations, and whether or not they share common friends and college experiences.

Nevertheless, employers who do so may find their hiring judgments colored by such information — no matter how objective they claim to be. We therefore believe that there is no valid justification for employers to snoop around on Facebook. Using Facebook profiles to screen job applicants is poor hiring policy.

Students: Protect yourself with

privacy settings

Although Facebook is ostensibly limited to the Stanford community, it is all too easy for employers to gain access to personal profiles. As such, everyone who uses Facebook should be aware that by posting private information online, they make such information available to future employers.

Your job search could be jeopardized by risque quotes or embarrassing photographs involving alcohol and varying degrees of public nudity. Without becoming completely paranoid, you should consider taking the following steps to protect your employability.

• Consider whether or not you are comfortable with employers viewing all information on your Facebook profile. This includes personal information like your political affiliation and sexual orientation, as well as other things like your Facebook groups or random comments on your wall.

• Temporarily remove private information and photographs before embarking on your job search. Photographs that have been removed or untagged can be uploaded or restored at a later date.

• Restrict access to your Facebook profile, allowing only your friends to view your personal information. At the very least, students should consider restricting access to their profiles by excluding alumni members until after completing their job search. This is a very useful privacy setting of which many students are unaware.

• Decline to comment, or be prepared with a witty answer, if asked about your Facebook profile during a job interview.

Facebook: Step up privacy protections

It is tricky for site owners to police a site like Facebook, which was created to facilitate cyber-stalking. Yet it is in their commercial interest to ensure the privacy of Facebook users. Students need to feel comfortable representing themselves however they wish, far from the prying eyes of employers. Otherwise, students are apt to censor their profiles, turning Facebook into a collection of professional resumes.

The site administrators at Facebook need to make students more aware of all available privacy settings. Periodic advertisements could remind students of these options and alert them to possible access by prospective employers.

The Facebook should also include a policy statement expressly warning employers against using the site to screen potential candidates. Students will then have a legal basis for alleging employment discrimination on the basis of political affiliation, sexual orientation or any other personal information that could have been made available through Facebook. The current policy against noncommercial use, while significant, seems insufficient.

A large part of Facebook’s popularity lies in its ability to foster a vibrant online community that taps into our society’s confessional culture. We believe that students should be allowed to enjoy Facebook responsibly by posting witty quotes and funny pictures; we hope that site administrators will do all they can to protect our privacy and that prospective employers will do all they can to respect our privacy.