Employers should be banned from searching Facebook profiles of job applicants, say children's groups

A coalition including the NSPCC, the Children's Society and the NCH want a new law to prevent employers and colleges searching the internet for "digital dirt" on potential recruits.

Studies show one in five employers use the internet to check out candidates and two thirds of those admit their final decision has been influenced by what they found.

Checking networking sites is also common practice for recruitment agencies with research showing more than 60 per cent of British executives are signed up to Facebook or similar.

The children's charities argue that this is akin to nosing through someone's diary and is examining whether existing discrimination laws could be used to prevent the practice.

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John Carr, secretary of the Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet Safety which is co-ordinating the campaign, said pictures and gossip posted while someone is a teenager should not be used against them years later.

He told the The Times: "When young people put up their personal profiles they are not thinking about job or university applications.

"Typically, they are simply talking to their mates. Employers or admissions tutors who delve into these places are being highly and inappropriately intrusive.

"It's a bit like looking at someone's diary."

He added: A world where even a 14-year-old has to think twice before posting an adolescent poem suddenly looks very unappealing and increases the pressure on children and young people to conform to a set of tightly focused adult norms."

The law currently enforces equal opportunities in recruitment and a system that searches social network sites could be unfair because some candidates will have profiles and others will not.

But if this does not go far enough, data protection laws could be used. An employer might then have to gain permission to read online data, in the same way as asking for a referee.

Margaret Moran, Labour MP for Luton South, is talking to authorities in the House of Commons about a ten-minute rule Bill to tighten up the law.

She has also written to Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell, asking him if he believes employers should use social networking sites for recruitment.

"Social networking sites were never intended as a factual reference point for young people," the MP said.

"The technology allows unverified content to go up very easily. It is simple to load up spoof profiles and meddle with images. Companies have no way to verify what is up there."

The British scientist who created the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, recently insisted that online data and web history must belong to the individual who posted it.

But he also warned that people must consider what they are up-loading because once it is on the internet, it is regarded as common property.

David Smith, the Deputy Information Commissioner, also highlighted that there are privacy settings that can be set up but more than half of young people choose to make their profiles public.

He said: "The cost to a person's future can be very high if something undesirable is found by the increasing number of education institutions and employers using the internet as a tool to vet potential students or employees."

The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD), which has been approached by the charities for support, is not in favour of an outright ban but warns companies to be careful about using the websites.

Resourcing adviser Deborah Fernon said: "I wouldn't want it to become illegal because in some industries, advertising and IT for example, personal sites have become almost a CV in itself, and that might become more commonplace.

"But we would warn companies that in the quest to find the right person for a job, social networking sites could be at best irrelevant and at worst misleading.

"Also, good practice requires that every candidate is treated equally, which means all candidates would have to have similar profiles before information is used, otherwise it would be discriminatory."