Forced to use personal Facebook account for work

Question

I accepted a new offer of work, and then while on-boarding, they asked me for my Facebook link. I declined to supply it, because I have political, religious, and offensive humor on there... that would be completely inappropriate to share with a work group.

They are demanding a link though, because the group uses Facebook for their ongoing communication, coordination, and other development (i.e. scrum). I realize I could create a new page, but that still ties to my personal account that I can't share professionally.

I know I could use a separate email and create a new FB account, but that violates ToS, and can be problematic for other reasons as noted in this related question: How to separate personal Facebook from professional FB while getting full benefit of FB? Another answer to the linked question is to manage it very hands-on, who is who in which group, and what posts go where... but that sounds like regrettable mistakes just begging to happen.

Any ideas on how I can better isolate / partition the personal and the work Facebook activities?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. — Neo, Apr 23 '20 at 13:41

score 179 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 20 '20 at 23:21

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This is a big red flag. If it's really integral to their internal communications then they would have it organised and would give you an account to use.

Just the fact that it's in use is a flag, but requiring your personal one sets the flag on fire.

answered Apr 20 '20 at 23:21

Kilisi

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Although facebook is really pushing their workplace comms suite, it is based on personal account - though afaik if your profile is private enough to strangers, and you won't add them as friends, should be fine. – Aida Paul Apr 20 '20 at 23:22
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@TymoteuszPaul sure, but if it's integral to an IT company they should have it organised properly and be making, controlling and issuing the accounts. Rather than sellotaping staffs personal accounts to theirs. That creates a bunch of info security risks that shouldn't be taken. – Kilisi Apr 20 '20 at 23:48
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@TymoteuszPaul Facebook has had lots of issues with their security permissions letting people see things users don't expect, so I wouldn't recommend relying on that to keep your data private. – Kat Apr 21 '20 at 18:34
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from the question: "Any ideas on how I can better isolate / partition the personal and the work Facebook activities?" What is your advice? To not take the job? – Michael Apr 21 '20 at 23:02
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@Michael jobs don't grow on trees, but I'd ask them to issue me a fb account and move forwards from their response. Jobs come and go, your identity doesn't so in my case despite having nothing to hide on fb I wouldn't use mine. – Kilisi Apr 21 '20 at 23:23
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While everything in this is true, this doesn't answer the question. – corsiKa Apr 22 '20 at 04:38
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@corsiKa is does, indirectly: it means "don't work there, and if you choose to do it anyway, it's on you". It's like a question "How can I make an effective poison?" on cooking.SE and the answer can be "Don't make poison, it kills people" – Shadow Wizard Love Zelda Apr 22 '20 at 09:00
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@ShadowWizardisEarForYou I already asked whether "don't work there" was what he meant, and he implied it wasn't. – Michael Apr 22 '20 at 10:55
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@ShadowWizardisEarForYou Careful with that strawman, it could catch fire. If Kilisi is saying OP should get a job somewhere else, then sure. But this could mean "don't work here" it could mean "escelate this to management" or "be careful because if this is shady what else might be shady" or all of the above. But only he knows what he means by this. – corsiKa Apr 22 '20 at 13:08
@Kilisi Sorry for the naive question here; I don't have much workplace experience. I see a lot of people here say "this is a red flag". In this particular case, what does the red flag stand for? In what ways do you predict the company will harm the employee in the future, based on this incident? – Blue Apr 22 '20 at 17:48
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@Blue red flag is generic for dangerous/incompetent/unprofessional basically anything to be careful about as it could be indicative of underlying unprofessionalism, scamming, hidden agendas or worse.... or it could be harmless, but it's something to make you pause and think about the bigger picture at the very least. – Kilisi Apr 22 '20 at 23:08
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This was posted as an answer, but it does not attempt to answer the question. – Chris Apr 23 '20 at 14:32

bharal · Answer 2 · 2020-04-21T21:13:23.607

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Just make a new account. It's Facebook's Terms of Service for goodness' sake, it's not a big deal. You'll probably only use it at work, and you should definitely not be on Facebook at work if you're posting crap, so it's unlikely that anyone will notice.

If you only use it at work, for work purposes, then there is no way for them to connect you to the account.

edited Apr 21 '20 at 21:13

answered Apr 20 '20 at 22:34

bharal

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Make a business page for "Dan's Software Development" (or whatever you do) which is allowed by Facebook. https://blog.hootsuite.com/steps-to-create-a-facebook-business-page/ – DJClayworth Apr 21 '20 at 13:02
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Frankly Facebook has no real means of connecting two accounts like this, creating a new account for work isn't going to cause any problems. They don't like people doing it, but they can't do anything about it. – Ruadhan2300 Apr 21 '20 at 13:37
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It's still very unfortunate that they use such an unprofessional tool for their correspondence - especially with the security risks it introduces - but if you still need this job, this is the correct answer. – Zibbobz Apr 21 '20 at 17:36
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@Ruadhan2300 going to heavily disagree with this claim. From personal experience they are extraordinarily good at connecting identities. They spend giant mounds of cash on things to accomplish that goal, it's basically a core business. Not that I think Facebook would be particularly aggressive at enforcing that part of the tos, though. – eps Apr 21 '20 at 18:32
@Dukeling yeh, i meant that it is a ToS and unimportant, and whether it is compliant or not is hardly troubling. Also, if you only use it for work purposes when at work, they really cannot connect you to it. – bharal Apr 21 '20 at 21:11
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@eps their core business is advertising, not detecting duplicate users (actually, it is in their interest to not detect duplicate users, and if they could ignore them without seeing the community deteriorate they would). if OP uses the fb account for the large part of time at work, and only for work, and never uses their own fb account at work, then i doubt they would ever be able to notice. – bharal Apr 21 '20 at 21:16
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Just make sure to never log into your work FB with a personal device - thus intermingling the accounts and potentially posting to the wrong one. – CramerTV Apr 21 '20 at 23:11
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@bharal I have to second eps. They absolutely can - and will - make connections based on a combination of browsing history, connections, OS/browser fingerprints, IP addr, location, plus more subtle things like mouse movements, scroll speed, content dwell time, etc, etc. Analysing this sort of data is absolutely at the heart of their business. (cont'd) – pcdev Apr 22 '20 at 04:39
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They're not likely to ban you for violation of their ToS, but they could definitely match the new account to your existing one with a high degree of probability within a day or two of use. If you connect to your personal FB account via the work network (say on your phone via office wifi), that practically takes the match to 100% – pcdev Apr 22 '20 at 04:40
"Pages" have certain limitations which users don't. – pjc50 Apr 22 '20 at 08:55
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@pcdev no, this is false. all of these things are blown out the window if you just don't access fb on the same computer from different accounts very often (ie rarely). esp if OP is just using it for work (which they should be, when at work). again, nobody should be connecting to fb when they post offensive crap on any sort of work network, wifi, whatever. – bharal Apr 22 '20 at 13:07
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"Facebook's Terms of Service for goodness' sake," is extremely bad advice. Violating a website's terms of service has been construed as "unauthorized access to a computing system" in multiple jurisdictions. Canada's C-51, for example, makes this a terrorism offence. – Apr 22 '20 at 17:31
@evandentremont Well, the *good* news is that this means we are well on our way to a gritty, cyberpunk sorta future (where large corporations dictate the laws and traditional governments remain only to shield corporate profits). The *bad* news is this means we are well on our way to a gritty, cyberpunk sorta future, where large corporations dictate the laws and traditional governments remain only to shield corporate profits. – Seldom 'Where's Monica' Needy Apr 22 '20 at 17:50
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I mean, yes. This is extremely dangerous advice as a result. A kid in my city was criminally charged and faced 10 years in jail for violating the ToS of our province's FOIPOP website. Thankfully they got dropped when people realized what actually happened. – Apr 22 '20 at 17:54
If making a new account - I'd suggest making it completely work inappropriate. Something like "Daves consultancy services" or "Daves plumbing" would be a couple of reasonable options. They might then realise that what they're asking for is something that is company specific; and as such something that they need to take ownership of. – UKMonkey Apr 23 '20 at 08:47
You gotta be really careful with "Dan's Software Development". The company could potentially use this to prove you were an independent contractor in places and situations where this may matter. – Gregory Currie May 05 '20 at 09:32

score 28 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 20 '20 at 22:35

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"the group uses Facebook for their ongoing communication, coordination, and other development (i.e. scrum)."

IMO using Facebook for work communications isn't very professional and I can see why you are not keen. However, it sounds like your employer is entrenched in the system and doesn't want to migrate to a different one. I don't think you have many options other than to join in or find another employer.

Best bet is to create a new account which is completely disjoint from your regular account.

This isn't a "good" solution but it is much easier than any of the alternatives.

answered Apr 20 '20 at 22:35

P. Hopkinson

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What about people that don't/want facebook? – J_rite Apr 23 '20 at 14:42
Just create a "Mickey Mouse" account for work? But the much much bigger burning blood red flag is that a company uses a platform whose core business is data collection for company confidential material. They are just asking for confidential info to be leaked and abused. And guess who will get the blame in public? Hint: it does not start with "F". – Juha Untinen Apr 23 '20 at 20:53

score 25 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 21 '20 at 13:20

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Let's make a specific solution to this.

Refuse to give them your personal Facebook link.

The company cannot demand that you use personal property, including websites, for your work. And you are well within your rights not to give them access.

But the more important part is:

Tell them that on day 1 of your employment you will show them several much better ways to handle their communication for free.

Then on day 1 (or sooner if you like) introduce them to any of the dozens of communication platforms that are free for small teams. Candidates include:

Workplace Works very like Facebook but for working teams. Your best choice in this situation
Microsoft Teams
Slack

There are plenty of others. Google chat or Skype would probably do the job.

If they don't like this idea then create a new blank Facebook account specially for work, not linked to your personal account, using a different email, and send them that. If they don't like that then there is some shady reason they want your Facebook account.

Use this for a while, but as soon as you start work set up one of the above platforms and get people to start using it. Other employees are almost certainly just as annoyed as you about having to use their personal accounts. With any luck you can get them converted from Facebook in a few weeks and you can delete your second account.

answered Apr 21 '20 at 13:20

DJClayworth

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+1 for Workplace. My employer uses it internally for bulletins and some team communication (particularly under remote-working lockdown). – Ruadhan2300 Apr 21 '20 at 13:35
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This is a good answer but I find it highly unlikely they are unaware that other options exist. Most likely they will say thanks no thanks. But who knows +1 – eps Apr 21 '20 at 18:26
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I am sometimes surprised about what companies don't know. In any case I can think of absolutely no reason why a company would choose to use Facebook for team communication over a free tool designed for the job and used by tens of thousands of companies of all sizes - unless the deliberately want to have access to my personal Facebook account, in which case they can take their job and shove it. – DJClayworth Apr 21 '20 at 18:59
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I strongly disagree with the first half of your answer. Stepping into a company, refusing to use their existing tools, and then suggesting some alternatives when it is completely out of the scope of your job to make those decisions is never going to work. At best, they will say no. Worst case, you will get a reputation as being difficult and unreasonable. They clearly think the system is working for them at the moment or they'd be searching for something else. You need credibility, authority and trust to convince them to change. These things are all earned; you don't have them as a new joiner – Michael Apr 21 '20 at 22:59
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@Michael Under normal circumstances I would agree but using personal Facebook accounts is not "normal circumstances". The company is either utterly ignorant or has never taken the trouble to think about the problem (or has a deceitful agenda). A good company will listen to sensible suggestions whoever they come from. – DJClayworth Apr 21 '20 at 23:10
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@DJClayworth Sorry, but you don't stroll into Google, shoot an email to Sundar on your first day and tell him you've been having some thoughts on how to increase PPC ad venue. Like I said, in their mind the system is working. Even if a system is free, there is an opportunity cost incurred by migrating. So they will not change, and I see no upside in suggesting it. – Michael Apr 21 '20 at 23:49
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Google does not use Facebook for its communication, nor does any company bigger than one ten thousandth of Google's size. – DJClayworth Apr 22 '20 at 01:23
Can a company even require a person to maintain a Facebook account, since that is apparently a personal thing? I mean if you create an account in your name, it's going to be out there forever. (At least as I understand it: I object to the whole idea so have never looked that closely.) – jamesqf Apr 22 '20 at 03:35
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Professionally and strategically a bad move. Professionally bad because it's giving advice before understanding the situation; it should be the other way around. Strategically bad because there are always people invested in the way things are set up, and it's always risky to alienate people where you don't know their status (it's much better to convince them than to oppose them). – toolforger Apr 22 '20 at 06:16
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@DJClayworth I didn't say that. My point was that "A good company will listen to sensible suggestions whoever they come from" is a nice soundbite but is not actually true. – Michael Apr 22 '20 at 08:36
Not going to argue with you in comments. – DJClayworth Apr 22 '20 at 12:46
Do you think even Facebook itself uses Facebook for their office communications? I'm legitimately curious. I know there were some holdouts at Google still using Google+ for a while. – Darrel Hoffman Apr 22 '20 at 19:10
While slack is for free for small companies, it's well overpriced for anything that is not a small company. Having a slack account for every teams is just another kind of communication issue. – Sulthan Apr 23 '20 at 07:36
The company cannot demand that you use personal property, including websites, for your work. Are you saying that there's a law preventing this or do you just thing that the company won't fire a new employee for refusing? – BSMP Apr 24 '20 at 01:50
"Tell them that on day 1 of your employment you will show them several much better ways to handle their communication for free." Don't you know that corporations are not going to listen to whatever you say about them being bad or wrong? They want people to trumpet their glory or emperor's new clothes. You may rock the boat? Then they want you gone – Stefanie Gauss Jun 25 '22 at 23:02

score 21 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 21 '20 at 12:54

The company is skimping on security. If it’s on Facebook, no matter what, they should assume it is visible to all the world. Same with WhatsApp. Nothing should ever be posted there that the company doesn’t want the whole world to know. Including their competitors, evil hackers, or courts if they get sued.

Unless your principles are worth more to you than having a job, create a Facebook account that clearly identifies you as an employee of the company. Put no private information on it. And put no company information on it that could get you personally in trouble.

I would say the terms of service are mostly there to protect Facebook if something goes wrong. Like some information leaks out, and your company sues Facebook for gazillions because Facebook leaked info from their company accounts, then Facebook says “look at our terms of service, it says no company accounts, all the damage is your own fault”.

score 14 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 21 '20 at 05:45

This is a red flag. If they're going to skimp on this. What else are they going to skimp on?

Will you need to supply your own laptop? Will they pay for software licenses? Will you be expected to work without standard professional software? Or will you be expected to pirate the software you need?

Right now, you should be asking them all kinds of tough questions.

Another answer to the linked question is to manage it very hands-on, who is who in which group, and what posts go where... but that sounds like regrettable mistakes just begging to happen.

Assuming you don't want to pull out now, I'd suggest you create a second account using a second email address. Use a different browser for each account (or a different browser profile for each account). And make your primary account as private as possible.

To make sure you don't mistake one account for another. Style each browser (or each profile) with a different avatar, a different color, and a different background image.

If you can afford it, you could even buy yourself a cheap Chromebook/Chromebox and maintain a physical separation between your personal computer and your work computer.

Personally, I find that having a physical separation between the two types of environment actually helps a lot with my own productivity. And if I want to check my personal Facebook, or my personal email, or whatever, I'll get up from my desk and go to a different room to do it in.

'Will they pay for software licenses?' Nah, they probably want him to download the torrents at home, then bring them to the office on a USB stick. — Ivana, Apr 22 '20 at 14:42

score 12 · Answer 7 · edited Apr 23 '20 at 08:48

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I see 3 realistic solutions:

1. Make a separate account.

Pro: Company is happy
Con: You've violated the ToS, but realistically nothing will happen.
Con: Company might find and ask about the private account, or question why this account has no activity

2. Do a deep dive and clean up your original account. Delete controversial posts, group associations and photos. Commit to not using it for personal reasons until you've left the company.

Pro: Company is happy
Pro: You don't risk them finding and asking about the private account
Con: There is a chance you'll miss something
Con: You lose the ability to speak openly on Facebook (maybe try Twitter)

3. Quit

Pro: You don't have the problem
Con: You don't have a job

edited Apr 23 '20 at 08:48

Simson

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answered Apr 21 '20 at 23:29

Michael

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Don't to anything, evade giving them the link.

Ivana

Apr 22 '20 at 14:43

I won't backvote your answer but "speak openly on Facebook" makes me laugh, how can you imagine just one second to speak openly in a walled garden? – gouessej Apr 22 '20 at 14:57

@Ivana 4.1) get fired, or sabotage your career there sufficiently that you may as well have been fired. Goto 3 – Michael Apr 22 '20 at 17:33

"You've violated the ToS, but realistically nothing will happen."

This is bad advice. Violating a ToS has been construed as "unauthorized access to a computer system" in multiple jurisdictions.

– Apr 22 '20 at 17:58

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@evandentremont How many of those cases involved Facebook? Tech companies like Facebook derive significant value from positive public opinion. It allows them to avoid government scrutiny and regulation in a way that a less popular company cannot. They have absolutely nothing to gain from litigating against an individual, even if there is legal precedent that they'd be able to win, and plenty to lose. The absolute worst case scenario is that both accounts are deactivated. Hardly the end of the world. – Michael Apr 22 '20 at 18:12

@Michael Violating TOS on its own is not a problem. “No company accounts” just protects Facebook from being sued if things go wrong. Millions work from home right now against their ISPs terms of service (I do, hello BT), which just means they can’t sue for loss of earnings or similar if their connection goes down. Of course doing naughty things that are also against the TOS gets you into trouble. – gnasher729 May 05 '20 at 11:05

@Michael the law doesn't specify a specific company's TOS, so that's irrelevant. Companies don't press charges, cops do. – May 05 '20 at 21:35

@evandentremont And when I'm arrested for creating a separate Facebook account for work, I will certainly seek your legal council. – Michael May 05 '20 at 22:29

Go to my website and there's ample explanation why this is serious. – May 06 '20 at 23:20

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 22 '20 at 13:19

First, Facebook changed a lot of stuff from its earliest days and today is a more privacy-aware service. In the end, you might theoretically be able to separate offensive content from the visibility of your future coworkers. But that's a tough job, especially if for some reason you want to post content publicly. And on the other hand, having a personal FB account and posting publicly content from there doesn't prevent your company to spot that content.

In the end, I would straight go to the secondary account way. Facebook is great at detecting duplicate accounts. They may link those internally, but before action is taken and both profiles are suspended, a lot of time will be past.

If that happens, FB will suspend both accounts and then you could

Blame FB for having blocked you from accessing work network. The company is liable for not using a proprietary business platform with an SLA or at least internal account management (MS Office, for example, won't ban individual employees account)
Discuss with FB moderators about your suspension and justify it was done to separate work from private life. FB has no interest in permanently deleting accounts of real individuals. That plays against them.

Disclaimer. I left Facebook more than 13 years ago.

Therac · Answer 9 · 2020-04-23T17:27:36.530

Different companies use different collaboration tools. Often these are completely ad-hoc solutions, never designed for this sort of thing.

I know of a few industries, organizations and roles where it's normal and expected to use personal social network accounts and their tools for work communication, both internal and external.

However, these are all highly customer-facing industries and roles, such as tourism, entertainment, and social media marketing. In tourism, this helps bring in repeat customers and their friends by making the connections more personal. In other industries, there are roles like brand ambassadors that can be expected to maintain their personal account in a way that aligns with the company's interests.

If you are in a non-public position of a typical software developer, there is no specific reason to use public social media accounts for work. This is most likely a sign that the company is in or barely past the start-up stage - something that started as a couple people talking about a pet project on Facebook, and has grown with little change.

In such extremely small, extremely informal companies, the definition of work-appropriateness is way broader than in traditional business. After all, how do you know your co-workers don't have even messier pages? If you're not sure if they care about that, you should ask and confirm.

For a larger company - basically, anywhere where your interview team didn't include the owner and CEO - still using ad-hoc tools like personal social network accounts would be a sign of growth problems and a red flag. Still, you can outline your concerns and ask if they've got other collaboration tools you could use. It could be that they're just about to migrate to something more professional.

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered May 05 '20 at 09:23

Any ideas on how I can better isolate / partition the personal and the work Facebook activities?

First of all, you should make sure that only your friends can see your "wall" and you tighten up your privacy settings so that strangers cannot see your content. You should no be relying on them not being able to find you to ensure they won't get offended. If you have offensive materials publicly visible on your Facebook page, then you are likely already doing yourself a disservice.

Sanitise any information that is publicly visible. Use incognito mode to make sure.

Then you give the organisation your account link.

What the most likely outcome is, they will get you to join a group. Joining a group does not give group members access to your wall, if you have set up your privacy settings correctly. They need to know your link to know who to grant access to.

From a technical perspective, business needs are met, and your privacy is retained.

Is it a massive red flag? No it isn't. In some fields and sizes of businesses it's not uncommon for people deciding processes and tools to not understand or feel comfortable with the wide variety of options out there. They understand Facebook, so that's what they'll use.

In an ideal world, they would supply all equipment required to get you to do your job. We don't live in an ideal world, and now is probably not the best time to be a troublemaker.

It's a good idea that once you get settled, suggest other forms of communication that don't require personal accounts.

Forced to use personal Facebook account for work

10 Answers10

I see 3 realistic solutions: