employee privacy rights

I just discovered How to Start a Startup, which is a series of videos published by Stanford University on YouTube with some outstanding speakers. The problem is that the class videos are so great, I have a hard time turning them off. Case in point, this week I watched Ben Horowitz’ lecture: How to

Generally, employees have a privacy expectation in their personnel files, contact information, and work related information. However, this expectation of privacy is not limitless, especially when the employee publically airs his or her work experiences on social media sites for the public to see. Courts have held that employees can waive this right to privacy

This will be one of our most attended webinars, and there is still time to sign up. The webinar will cover legal issues facing California employers under the new Labor Code section prohibiting employers from asking applicants and employees for social media passwords, privacy issues when conducting background checks, alternatives to social media policies, and

I will be conducting a webinar on January 15, 2013 on legal issues of social media in the workplace. The presentation will cover everything a California employer needs to know about social media in the modern workplace of 2013:

  • Discussion on the new law (Labor Code section 960) that prohibits employers from asking applicants and

I would love to be able to tell my clients that the Internet and social media has created a very complex set of legal issues that requires them to hire me in order to help develop all new handbook policies, change the way they conduct background checks on applicants, and monitor their employees. However, unfortunately

There are more reports of employers requiring applicants and employees to provide their passwords to their Facebook pages so that the employers can get a more accurate view of the employee’s character. I wrote about this issue a couple of years ago regarding the City of Bozeman requiring passwords from applicants. Apart from being

Mat Honan at Gizmodo wrote recently about a new company that helps employers search applicant’s “internet background” to assist in the hiring process. As Mat rightly points out, much of the concern over this “new technology” is overblown, and as he puts it, "[e]mployers would have to be stupid not to Google job candidates." 

Plaintiffs Hernandez and Lopez were employed by Hillsides Children Center, Inc., which provided services to children with special needs and who were abused. Hillsides discovered that someone was accessing pornographic websites on a computer located in the Plaintiffs’ office late in the evening. 

The employer, citing its mission to protect abused children and to protect

The City of Bozeman, Montana asked job applicants to provide their user names and login information to common social networking sites on their job applications. As you may expect, this has caused a major uproar from privacy groups.

Just over one-year ago, I was asked by employers about what legalities were involved in Googling