Here's a city for which you don't want to work: Bozeman, Montana. Evidently the policy makers make you give up user names and passwords to social networking sites in order to be employed by the city.
How would you like to apply for a job and have your prospective employer ask for the usernames and passwords for all your social-networking accounts?
That’s what’s happened to applicants for jobs with the city of Bozeman, Montana, who were surprised to discover they needed more than a work history and references.
“Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” reads a background-check waiver form that applicants had to sign. (There’s no mention of Twitter.) The form then contains three lines where applicants are to list their logins and passwords.
Having a background in IT, giving passwords would require waterboarding and even then I would be hard pressed to give them up. But forget the right to privacy and the huge personal security breech: it's just plain stupid. The city is setting themselves up for a lawsuit the likes of which they've never seen. Imagine if someone applied for a job and a few days later they found someone had posted things in their name, or contacted friends and family, or posed as them.
If illegal and immoral isn't enough, it's just plain dumb. It's the kind of thing that makes you wonder if the city government likes to play with gasoline and matches.
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