So I am looking for an internship for this summer and I've submitted a couple of applications. For some internships, they asked for a tweet or a link to the applicant's facebook page to presumably determine the applicant's social klout I would guess. So while I knew that some employers wanted to know how active a person was with social media, I was shocked to read an article which said that employers were asking for Facebook passwords from applicants during job interviews. This
Associated Press reported that some companies and goverment agencies are asking for apllicants' passwords in order to log in and look around as the user. Apparantly troubled by this report, Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut in an another
Associated Press article said they were calling on the Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to start investigations.
Now I suppose that, no I cannot come up with any reason why companies would ask for an applicant's password. Social media is an increasingly important part of most companies' efforts to increase their brand image among other things but I think asking for a password to verify an applicant's social media credentials is going a bit too far. What do you think?