Business Blog
The Fair Credit Reporting Act & social media: What businesses should know
You have some job openings at your company or maybe you’re thinking of promoting people to new positions. You’ve winnowed that stack of resumes down to some promising candidates. Now it’s nitty gritty time: background checks.
Employment background checks can include information from a variety of sources: credit reports, employment and salary history, criminal records — and these days, even social media. But regardless of the type of information in a report you use when making hiring decisions, the rules are the same. Companies providing reports to employers and employers using reports must comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
The FTC staff recently looked at a company selling background reports that include information from social media to see if they were complying with FCRA. Staff’s letter to the company emphasized that when reports include information derived from social media, the same rules apply. For example, companies selling background reports must take reasonable steps to ensure the maximum possible accuracy of what’s reported from social networks and that it relates to the correct person. They have to comply with other FCRA sections, too — like providing copies of reports to people and having a process in place if people dispute what’s said about them in a report. In addition, companies must give employers who use their reports information about employers’ responsibilities under FCRA — like their obligation to provide employees or applicants with advance notice of any adverse action taken on the basis of the reports.
Another key requirement: Companies selling background reports for employment must require that employers certify the report won’t be used in a way that would violate federal or state equal employment opportunity laws or regulations.
Of course, given the sensitive nature of the information in reports, everyone — companies selling the reports and employers using them — has a legal obligation to keep them secure and dispose of them properly.
Read Employment Background Checks and Credit Reports to find out more about what the law says about using credit reports in the workplace.
It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.
The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.
We don't edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.
In reply to what about employers that don by Mike
In reply to Why would a page produced for by Really?
In reply to Could a debt collection for a by Sarah
Here is some information from the FTC about the use of background checks (including credit information) when a person is applying for a job.
In reply to I had an employer tell me by Sabrina
Here is some information from the FTC for employees and job applicants. If consumers ever suspect a violation of the law, they can report it through the FTC Complaint Assistant.