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A self-described "geek lite," Nancy fell in love with computers when a college classmate described her as illogical, and challenged her to take a course in computing. Granted, it was the days of Hollerith cards, but she has been fascinated with computers and technology ever since. (And she passed the course!) Read more >>




04/09/2012 01:32 PM

Computing Columnist: None of Your Business?

It shouldn't be news to anyone who uses it that social media (notably Facebook and Twitter) have crashed more than one budding career. I don't quite understand why people would post incriminating things on their social media sites - particularly things like snarky comments about current employers - but then I don't live by or for my social media posts.

I was more than a little astounded to read recently, however, that some employers are taking what I'd consider to be the incredible step of asking employees for their social media logon information! We can only presume they are planning to police it for anything that doesn't fit their "brand," as it's easy enough to simply follow employees to keep updated on what they're saying without requiring logon credentials.

Survey-takers at American Pulse(TM), a survey organization that is part of Prosper Business Development Corp., revealed recently that most of them would prefer to quit their jobs sooner than give up their privacy.

A mere 11.4% of adults 18+ would comfortably show their social media profiles to a potential employer, with men being slightly more likely (14.7% vs. 8.3%) to do so than women. And while almost 90% of us agree that we bear the responsibility of what we post on our social media sites, just slightly fewer (about 85%) also feel that their employers have no business digging into what they consider to be their private lives - however publicly shared on their social media sites.