Online investigations into job candidates could be illegal

Companies could be infringing privacy if they dig up information about job applicants from social networking websites, an internet expert has warned.

John Carr, chairman of the UK Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet Safety, believes that employers and education officials could be crossing the line when they look up information about applicants on the web.

"There are lots of rumours about young job applicants being screened on Google or even university tutors looking at people applying for further education," he said.

"If that really is happening, then it could be illegal - when the kids are posting a picture of a party, they are only doing it to let their mates look. They are not doing it for an application form."

Britain's data protection laws are intended to prevent private information about individuals from being used without their knowledge or control. Regulators say that accessing publicly available information over the internet would not necessarily breach the law, and that it remains the duty of the individual to protect information they put online.

"Essentially if an individual - a potential employer or university tutor - looked at someone else's profile on a social networking site, it would not be a breach of data protection," said a spokeswoman for the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), Britain's privacy watchdog.
However, it remains unclear whether organisations covertly accessing people's private web pages or email accounts would constitute a breach of the law. Last week the ICO issued guidance to users of social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo, urging them to take their privacy more seriously. A survey found that although 71% of 14- to 21-year-olds did not want their future employers to look at their profiles on social networking sites, only 40% realised that their online activities could be traced indefinitely.

The trend for potential employers to look to the web to find out more about applicants is growing, while officials are cracking down more heavily on social networking activities. More than 1,700 public sector employees have been sacked or disciplined for their use of the internet or email in the past three years.

Earlier this year the owner of data search company Infofind was found guilty of impersonating officials from the Department for Work and Pensions to gather information about 250 people. The data was sold to debt collection agencies for as much as £1,000 a time. The company was fined £3,200 and ordered to pay £5,000 in costs.