My post How Your Social Media Posts Can Hurt You In Unexpected Ways has generated lots of feedback from friends and colleagues who have shared with me other ways that our social media posts can come back to haunt us.
I talked today with Kevin McKeown of LexBlog, Inc. who alerted me to another way that our social media posts can hurt. About one-third of law enforcement agencies are now requiring applicants to sign waivers authorizing their potential employers access to applicants’ private passwords, Internet pseudonyms, text messages and e-mail logs for social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace. See post here from CampusSafetyMagazine.com.
Interestingly, the city of Bozeman Montana last year announced a policy requiring prospective employees for city posts to disclose their usernames and passwords. But then, in response to a public outcry over privacy concerns, Bozeman back peddled and halted that policy. See here.
Law enforcement, which has long followed a policy of fully vetting potential candidates, is not likely to back peddle; and I am glad they won’t.
Feel free to share with me other ways that our social media posts can come back and bite us. Thanks Kevin.