Want a job? Give up your password.

A new trend has emerged of employers demanding access to the Facebook accounts of potential new hires and current employees. The practice has garnered media attention in the past week, and its legality has been called into question. Last Friday Facebook responded with a statement from Erin Egan, the company’s Chief Privacy Officer. Egan says that password sharing is a violation of the site’s “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities”, and goes on to warn employers that demanding account access could have some unintended consequences for them:

 If an employer sees on Facebook that someone is a member of a protected group (e.g. over a certain age, etc.) that employer may open themselves up to claims of discrimination if they don’t hire that person.

She ends the post with the promise to fight to protect user privacy, stating that,

Facebook takes your privacy seriously.  We’ll take action to protect the privacy and security of our users, whether by engaging policymakers or, where appropriate, by initiating legal action, including by shutting down applications that abuse their privileges.

While I think it’s great that Facebook is ‘taking a stand’ against employer violations of employee privacy, it does strike me as somewhat ironic. Since when does Facebook care about user privacy? The site has repeatedly come under fire for questionable privacy practices. Just a few weeks ago it alleged that the Facebook smartphone application could access a users private SMS messages – an allegation which Facebook has vehemently denied. In 2011 Facebook the U.S. Federal Trade Commission accused the social network of violating user privacy. The issue was settled, but the site was ordered to ¨respect the privacy wishes of its users and subjects it to regular privacy audits for the next 20 years.”

So, why the big fuss about employer passwords? Does Facebook really care about user privacy, or are they merely trying to deflect attention from their own bad track record on the issue?