In May, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law the country’s first legislation protecting employees and prospective employees’ passwords to social media accounts. The bill was introduced in response to the rising number of reports of job hunters being asked by potential employers to grant access to private information on personal social networking profiles.
The new law, which takes effect on Oct. 21, is garnering national attention in part because of the increasingly widespread use of social networking websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter. Indeed, more than half of Americans over the age of 12 list themselves as members of at least one online social network or group, and as many as 45 percent of employers surveyed admit to researching job applicants using social networking websites.
