UK plea to ban employers trawling Facebook

A powerful coalition of children’s charities is urging ministers to make it illegal for companies to trawl Facebook and other social networking websites for information on prospective recruits.They say that employers and educational establishments are known to be browsing the internet looking for “digital dirt” on young people who have applied for positions.The eight charities acted partly in response to a report in The Times that revealed one in five employers used the internet to check on candidates, and two thirds of those who did said that their decisions were influenced by what they found.
technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3613896.ece