Who's reading your Facebook?

Created by Daria Hrabrov

Who's reading your Facebook? Website reveals students' personal lives to recruiters, police

Provocative poses and wild party anecdotes are par for the course on the pages of Facebook.com, the popular social networking website.

But few students expect that anyone other than students or recent alumni will log on, let alone that Public Safety, faculty members or even potential employers might visit the site and encounter the embarrassing posts.

Facebook is not intended to be used for performing background checks, site spokesman and Harvard senior Chris Hughes said.

"But there's nothing we can do to stop it," he said.

Charles Davall, Public Safety deputy director, said his department does not use Facebook to learn of parties or to track students' activities.

"It's like Big Brother watching you and we really don't operate that way," he said. "We'd never consider it, either. Looking at students' private information ... [is] not the way we conduct business."

At the University of Michigan, however, the Department of Public Safety and the Ann Arbor Police Department have acknowledged using Facebook as an investigative tool. Officers have investigated and arrested students based on information gleaned from the website.

At Penn State University as well, campus police used Facebook groups and photographs to identify students who rushed the school's football field after a victory against Ohio State University. Similar police action has occurred at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Employers are less willing to admit using Facebook, though several recruiters interviewed did not deny using the site.

The Boston Consulting Group actively recruits summer interns and entry-level consultants at Princeton but says that it does not currently use Facebook to learn about applicants, New York-based recruiter Erin Mintz said.

"I'm not familiar with [Facebook]," she said. "But that's not to say that we wouldn't use it in the future. We always want to learn more about the people who may work for us, which means we try to find candidates and get to know them in more than one way."

At Credit Suisse, an international banking firm, a recruiter who asked that her name not be used said she has "heard rumors that people are using the website as a factor in decision-making," though she did not know of any specific cases.

A young alumna working in financial services said she has used the site to jog her memory of Princeton applicants and to get a sense of who they are.

"It's not like I was commenting on the fact that they were in a certain eating club and therefore fit into a certain stereotype," she said, declining to have her name or firm printed out of fear that her company might look poorly on her comments.

"For us, using Facebook is only to help get a sense of who someone is, not to judge them as the right or wrong hire," she added.

Seva Kramer, executive director of the Class of 1969 Community Service Fund, said she hadn't heard of Facebook being used as a recruitment tool.

"I really doubt that anyone would use the website in judgment," said Kramer, whose fund supports students working in nonprofit internships. "Perhaps if they were looking for people from Jacksonville, Fla., they might search for those students on the site and target them to apply for the position."

Kramer said that students post information on the website for their friends, not for potential employers.

"If [an employer] asked me whether it was appropriate to use it, I would certainly say no," she said. "It's inappropriate, and I hope it's not happening."

The website does have privacy preferences that users can set to prevent anyone other than a friend or a friend-of-a-friend from viewing their profiles. By default, any members of the site with a Princeton login can view another member's profile unless that member restricts access.

Only people with princeton.edu or alumni.princeton.edu email addresses can join the website, so firms interested in seeing the profiles of student applicants must use the login of a Princeton alumnus.

Ultimately, though, the information that Public Safety, potential employers or even classmates can see is up to each individual student. When it comes to Facebook, what happens on the Internet doesn't necessarily stay on the Internet.