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Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer has condemned employers who ask for the Facebook log-ins of employees or job applicants. It comes after a young man blogged that a potential employer had asked for his Facebook password during a job interview.

In a note on the Privacy page added this morning, FB Privacy honcho Erin Egan also threatened that the social network could take legal action against bosses who pry on Facebook, and would shut down the Facebook applications of guilty people or organisations.

"In recent months, we’ve seen a distressing increase in reports of employers or others seeking to gain inappropriate access to people’s Facebook profiles or private information," she wrote.

The Facebook privacy honcho lays out just how asking for an employee's Facebook password is wrong.

"It is an infringement of Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to 'share or solicit a password' she writes, and then lists out a number of legal attack tools that affected users can turn on prying employers.

Accessing private information through someone else's Facebook password could put the employer or interviewer in breach of privacy and discrimination laws.

Facebook is woolly on how exactly they will police their dictates on password security, but they do wave the vague threat of legal action.

And anyone in breach of the Facebook regulations can have their account deleted.

We’ll take action to protect the privacy and security of our users, whether by engaging policymakers or, where appropriate, by initiating legal action, including by shutting down applications that abuse their privileges.

So that's all right then. ®

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