Employees throughout New Jersey went to work today with new rights regarding how much their employers can monitor their personal social media accounts.

Employees throughout New Jersey went to work today with new rights regarding how much their employers can monitor their personal social media accounts.



No longer can employers ask for private passwords — during interviews or employment — as the state became the 12th in the nation to implement a law regulating social media privacy in the workplace.



How this will impact New Jersey business remains to be seen — and depends on whom you ask.



Stefanie Riehl, an assistant vice president with the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, said the law benefits employers as much as employees because it starts to define the rules of the game.



Riehl said the bill finds the “right balance” between protecting workers’ privacy and preserving employers’ interests.



One of the better additions to the legislation was the provision that employers have the right to conduct an investigation if a worker is transferring proprietary or confidential information on his or her personal social media account, Riehl said.



“I think it’s really important that you have that protection in there,” she said.



Scott Vernick, a privacy lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Fox Rothschild, said the fact the bill puts the responsibility on companies could be troublesome.



Vernick said that the law came as a reaction to stories of people who were either not getting hired or losing their jobs because of content on their private social media accounts. But while he thinks the impetus behind the law “makes perfect sense” from an employee’s standpoint, he notes that it does “put the burden on the employer now to have new policies in place.”



He adds that it is also an attempt to define boundaries that grow murkier by the day.

