Social Media checks by the Security watchdog (Capita)

ethan

ethan

ethan

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How is this supposed to work around GDPR:

Social Media Checks
The Check
Based on the 7 key Index measures of online behaviour, our social media background check utilises powerful screening and online behaviour evaluation tools designed to fairly and objectively assess a candidate’s social media profile over a 2, 3, 5 or 10 year period.

The background check result is presented in an easy to interpret report which helps protect an employer without breaching trust with the candidate.
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Ahh, Capita... what a great company failing upwards as ever on government contracts. Won't be surprised if it goes the way of Carillion.
 
So...a company doing some dubious automated "online behaviour evaluation" going back 10 years on an applicant breaches the applicant's trust but a company paying another company to do so doesn't? That argument is pure deception. It works only to provide a facade for the company to give a deceitful reply if challenged - "We didn't do it". Technically true because they paid to have it done rather than doing it themself, but deceitful.
 
And exactly would this work when somebody either doesn't use social media or has no social media accounts in their real name? Reminds me of when this happened to me.

Malevolence said:
The ever creeping social media thing freaks me out. I was asked for my Facebook details once at an interview, which is weird in itself, but I was then basically called a liar when I said I don't use it.
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I wonder what happens if you change your account name and then tell them you don't have a social media?
 
Capita had no problem discriminating against the mentally and physically disabled when they removed their benefits from them and ruled them fit for work. Discriminating against someone without a social media presence is a given. What are you trying to hide citizen?
 
So its a company effectively doing a social media search on someone? Is that not really any different to someone applying for a job and the boss at the company deciding to go and try and look them up on social media, or more commonly, looking at their linkedin profile or something? I mean I don't know much about the GDPR but if I was hiring someone, I'd probably go and look at their facebook page, I mean I wouldn't want to be hiring someone who has loads of pictures of themselves smoking weed or something on their facebook page, or making abusive posts or racial or homophobic posts on social media. Or can a boss not go and look at their social media presence or something under GDPR?
 
Just make your profile(s) private.

If I'm applying for a job I always put my Twitter to private for the duration of the process. Apparently people can be offended by the c * * * * u n t word. :confused:
 
Tombstone said:
So its a company effectively doing a social media search on someone? Is that not really any different to someone applying for a job and the boss at the company deciding to go and try and look them up on social media, or more commonly, looking at their linkedin profile or something? I mean I don't know much about the GDPR but if I was hiring someone, I'd probably go and look at their facebook page, I mean I wouldn't want to be hiring someone who has loads of pictures of themselves smoking weed or something on their facebook page, or making abusive posts or racial or homophobic posts on social media. Or can a boss not go and look at their social media presence or something under GDPR?
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Presumably you would expect them to volunteer the information The problem being, in between anybody worried about an adverse profile is likely to delete any offensive material and you would still be non the wiser? I mean what powers or tech do they have to go snooping against data that is presumably encrypted.?
 
ethan said:
Presumably you would expect them to volunteer the information The problem being, in between anybody worried about an adverse profile is likely to delete any offensive material and you would still be non the wiser? I mean what powers or tech do they have to go snooping against data that is presumably encrypted.?
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No idea, but like I say if I was a boss and I had a shortlist of applications in front of me on the desk, I'd probably try looking the people up on facebook/linkedin/instagram/whathaveyou before considering them for a position at/representing my company. Cant see anything wrong with doing that as a boss, seems a very sensible thing to do to me. Obviously the OP is just a snippet of something larger but all I see in that original post is a piece of text saying that there will be a search done on social media profiles? Which literally doesnt seem any different to me than a boss looking up prospective employees on facebook etc to see if they can get an idea of who the candidates are and whether it may highlight any possible beliefs or attitudes which could prove a headache with current employee relations or company PR down the road. Maybe it is something more insidious than that but I dont get any impression of anything of malice or bad from the OP. Just very sensible.
 
Dolph said:
How is searching publicly available information at odds with gdpr?
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It doesn't mention publicly available so how can we be certain that is what is being referred to? Capita are involved in providing Enhanced Disclosures and assessments for Pip. Quite often benefit assessments question claimants about using phones with Internet and Messenger to try and catch them out etc

I find it odd you can close everything off on Facebook apart from your profile and perhaps biography, which you can change and delete- and a company such as this would be offering to provide public information for a fee which you could otherwise do yourself. The cynical side of me assumes something worse.
 
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