Should Employers Be Forbidden to Facebook You?

If you live in Germany, don’t worry about those drunken party pictures on your wall. A job interviewer may not be allowed to see them.

As part of a workplace-privacy proposal, German lawmakers recommended restricting the access employers have to job applicants’ Facebook profiles, the New York Times reports. If the law passes, job recruiters could search publicly-available information and job sites like LinkedIn, but social sites like Facebook would be off-limits.

Germany has always been a stickler for personal privacy, having previously investigated Google and Apple for mining personal information. With this new bill, which has backing from Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s cabinet, employees can Facebook as they please — but employers may miss out on important information from potential workers. But until the bill passes, Germans, fix your privacy settings.