Germany Might Make Facebook Snooping Verboten for Employers

Posted on Aug 25, 2010

If you’ve recently entered the job market (and who hasn’t in the last couple of years), you’re probably familiar with the ritual of sterilizing your Facebook presence and hoping your prospective boss doesn’t find anything juicy. Apparently Germans are sick of potential employers snooping, and a proposed law would put limits on that.

New York Times:

The bill would allow managers to search for publicly accessible information about prospective employees on the Web and to view their pages on job networking sites, like LinkedIn or Xing. But it would draw the line at purely social networking sites like Facebook, said Philipp Spauschus, a spokesman for the Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet on Wednesday gave its backing to the proposed law. The bill will now go to Parliament for discussion, and could be passed as early as this year, Mr. Spauschus said.

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