The Need for the Social Networking Protection Act

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Introduction
The rapidly increasing growth of social media has surpassed legislation that is currently in place. Any information that individuals display onto their social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and so on, is being used by numerous employers around the world in order to gain additional knowledge of employees and applicants. When there are no laws that are set in place to ban such behavior, it becomes a conventional occurrence amongst employers. Social media websites have developed into a widespread communication instrument for personal and professional affairs. Therefore, employers will naturally want to gain access to these websites, especially the websites of their employees and potential employees to further examine their qualifications and suitability for employment in their company or university. As a result, online privacy in this flourishing digital age has become a growing concern.
The reason social media websites are password protected is to maintain privacy of each individual. Not only is social media websites password protected, they also contain their own privacy settings. This means that within each website an individual can modify their privacy settings to personalize who can observe what they post. Therefore, employers’ requesting such confidential information goes above and beyond the scope of an interview and downright invades an individual’s privacy rights. Not only does this violate an individual’s privacy but it allows employers to rummage through personal photos and posts that were not meant for anyone but them or a few people. As a result, unfair prejudice can cost a person from being hired or approved to go to a university based on a piece of information an employer or school a...

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...os Angeles Times. Retrieved from: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/30/business/la-fi-tn-federal-bill-bans-employers-seeking-facebook-password-20120430

Newcomb, A. (2013, March 9). School Official Accused of Accessing Student’s Facebook Page. ABC News. Retrieved from: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/03/school-official-accused-of-accessing-students-facebook-page/

Richard, J. (2012, April 20). 37 Percent of Employers use Facebook to Pre-Screen Applicants, New Study Says. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/employers-use-facebook-to-pre-screen-applicants_n_1441289.html

U.S Senate. 113th Congress, 1st Session. H.R. 537, Social Networking Online Protection Act. Government Printing Office, 2013

U.S Senate. 112th Congress. 1st Session. H.R. 5684, Password Protection Act of 2012. Government Printing Office, 2012

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