Maryland has banned employers from asking for social media passwords

A while back it was reported that a teacher’s aide had been fired from her job for refusing to give her employers access to her Facebook account. While we understand that some companies have a certain image they’d like to maintain, asking employees to privatize their Facebook pages or remove some “sensitive” photos or status updates sounds like a better idea than asking directly for their passwords, right? Now it seems that the authorities are taking such requests pretty seriously and if you’re living in the state of Maryland, you will be able to breathe a sigh of relief to hear that your employers are now banned from asking employees or applicants for access to their social media accounts. This would effectively make the state of Maryland the first state in the US to pass such a bill. Perhaps other states will soon follow suit or launch similar bills of their own in the near future.