Assessing potential employees via social network sites could be illegal

Late last week, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued a warning that posting sensitive personal information to social networking profiles could potentially affect a person’s chances of getting a job should prospective employers choose to seek them out via the likes of MySpace. However, an Internet expert has now come forward to reveal that any such trawling for personal information related to applicants could well be illegal. Internet expert offers that employers assessing job applicants via social networking sites could be breaking the law. Credit: MySpace.

Internet expert offers that employers assessing job applicants via social networking sites could be breaking the law. Credit: MySpace.Specifically, John Carr, the chairman of the UK Children’s Charities Coalition on Internet Safety, has offered that employers (and even education officials assessing potential students) could be leaving themselves open to possible prosecution should they turn to social networking Web sites or the Google search engine to gather personal applicant information."There are lots of rumours about young job applicants being screened on Google or even university tutors looking at people applying for further education," commented Mr. Carr in a Guardian Unlimited report. "If that really is happening, then it could be illegal – when the kids are posting a picture of a party, they are only doing it to let their mates look. They are not doing it for an application form."However, while British laws related to data protection exist to prevent a person’s private information from being used without their consent or notification, the ICO watchdog outlines that viewing publicly available information through the Internet is not necessarily a breach of the law. An ICO spokeswoman has commented that if a potential employer or higher education official views personal information belonging to an applicant it would perhaps not be deemed as an illegal invasion of privacy because it’s the responsibility of the individual to protect any sensitive information they choose to post online.The ICO’s recent study revealed that while some 71 percent of those polled between the ages of 14-to-21 did not want their personal information to be open for viewing for potential employers, only a mere 40 percent of them knew their online information could be freely viewed and assessed.