Online diarists beware: Your employer may be watching

All it takes is a few clicks on Facebook.com to learn some nitty-gritty about Matt Wyatt.

He’s 24 and a graduate of the University of Southern California. He eats pizza at “other than reasonable mealtimes” and believes the new film “Munich” was “gut-wrenching good.”

And he recently ate rancid butter.

Social-networking Web sites like Facebook, MySpace.com, Friendster.com and Xanga.com offer personal windows into the happenings of members, like Wyatt’s butter mishap. But some users are finding out the hard way that employers and school authorities have begun perusing the profiles, raising privacy issues for teens and 20-somethings who often consider their Internet profiles off-the-record. But a violation of privacy claim would face an uphill battle, because once people choose to put information online, they’ve decided it’s there for the world to see, experts say.

“You’re not going to get much traction out of a privacy claim,” said Cynthia Estlund, who teaches employment law at New York University and Columbia. She couldn’t think of a single instance where someone was successful in a legal case against an employer who looked at a publicly available Internet profile. “I don’t think you can really say you have a reasonable expectation of privacy among all the college kids in the country,” she said, referring to Facebook.

That means there’s nothing illegal in prospective employers and college admissions officers using online diaries as a tool in assessing job and college applications. Facebook may pose the least risk of unwanted attention, as members need a college e-mail address to join. But graduates can remain members and look at profiles when they become employers. MySpace and other sites are open to anyone.

Career counselors and admissions officials warn that some messages young people post on the Web could negatively affect them later. Authorities at some universities have said they are starting to look at the sites before hiring students for on-campus jobs. While the profiles often traffic in vulgar humor, some detail illegal behavior. One young woman at Brandeis University, for example, wrote of her love for “festive greens,” The Boston Globe reported, an obvious nod toward marijuana use that made it back to her grandmother.

“The basic problem here is that information that one puts online is fair game for [anyone] to use as they see fit,” said Chris Hoofnagel, a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Any information that is personally identifiable on MySpace is a very bad career move.”

Many, like Wyatt and his friends, use the Web sites to express no-holds-barred humor. On his profile, for example, one friend posted a message about the Messiah cracking open a beer and pouring it on someone; another made crude sexual suggestions. Wyatt said he and his buddies often joked that their postings would prevent them from ever running for public office.

“The most relevant problem for young people is that they’re going to write about youthful indiscretions that are indelibly marked into the Internet,” Hoofnagel said. “The overall point is that social-networking Web sites are very bad for privacy.”

Wyatt said his online exchanges are “equivalent to dinner conversation,” and hopes professionals wouldn’t take any of it too seriously. But when he looks at other profiles, he admits it can be hard to tell “how much they’re being funny and how much they’re being real.”

The stakes rise, though, when it’s your employer who doesn’t get the joke. Matt Donegan, 24, a former news reporter in Dover, Del., was fired in January after he posted a death list on his MySpace profile, according to a published report. The list called for the elimination of reality television’s inventor and anyone who drives under the speed limit in the left lane. He also complained about noisy black neighbors keeping him awake the night before Martin Luther King Day.

Donegan insisted the posts weren’t serious and contacted the American Civil Liberties Union for help. But a spokesman for the group’s New York chapter said such quandaries might not fall under its purview.

“We don’t have a position on people voluntarily posting information about themselves in public and the consequences of that,” said spokeswoman Maggie Gram. It’s clear on most social-networking Web sites that information will be public, she said, making any complaints about privacy invasion a stretch.

Employers have wide latitude to use information found online, according to Hoofnagel, the privacy lawyer. Laws govern what can’t be used in background checks, he said, but there’s usually a loophole and, in many cases, employers don’t have to verify information. Someone could post inaccurate information on Wyatt’s Facebook profile, for example, and an employer could use it as a basis not to hire him. Wyatt said he monitored his profile and would delete anything he considered over the top.

“Be careful what you post. You don’t know who’s watching,” warned Lance Choy, head of career services at Stanford. Choy said he didn't know of any specific examples where employers looked at online profiles, but he tells students it remains a possibility. Career counselors at Columbia may consider advising students about such scenarios as standard policy, depending on what they hear from other schools, said Alex Yepes, coordinator for alumni and employer relations.

Admissions officials at Johns Hopkins don’t check online profiles when they review applications. But they’re sure to check Facebook before selecting students to give university tours, said Daniel Creasy, a senior assistant director of admissions.

Creasy said he believed it was only a matter of time before the sites get more attention in the admissions process. He said he was astonished by what he saw on university-sponsored Web logs, where current students post messages for prospective students about life at Hopkins.

“I really hope the college counseling community encourages students to not post personal information,” he said. “You don’t want some of that information out there.”

Like a photo of Wyatt screaming wildly in a car?

“I wouldn’t post anything that I would really be ashamed of or embarrassed to be called on,” Wyatt said. But, he said, “Some of it, taken out of context, probably makes me look a little odd.”

E-mail: mds2133@columbia.edu