Jun

17

All Your Passwords Are Belong To Bozeman

June 17, 2009 | 1 Comment

How bad do you want a job with the City of Bozeman? Enough to give the City your login and password information to your Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts? According to KBZK, that’s what the City asks for on the job application:

“Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.

I can understand an employer wanting to make sure that staff members aren’t members of, say, racist or hate-sites, or having the company name sullied by (for example) a teacher who has posted naughty pictures on her MySpace page…but asking for the actual login and passwords? In addition to being just flat-out wrong, giving your login & password information to ANYONE is the #1 taboo for protecting your identity online.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Melynda on June 17, 2009 8:09 pm

    Big brother is watching! I used to work for the City of Bozeman, fortunately that was before social media sites were popular.

    Seems like it would be illegal to ask for passwords. I wonder if you can opt out of listing them or if that negates the application.

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