The wild nights out on Mondays and Wednesdays, the pyjama parties, those holidays away in the sun with your mates, everyone you know can find out exactly what you get up to after a hard time spent slogging away in the library all year.

A quick walk around the LRC at Penrhyn Road and you’ll see students interspersing their study time with Facebook sessions, catching up on what happened at the weekend or who has had their heart broken.

But at a time when students are at the end of their courses and on the job hunt, Facebook is fast becoming a friend turned enemy. There is a growing trend for employers to use Facebook to both monitor their employees’ extracurricular activities and snoop out an applicant before an interview.

The most recent case of this was the British Airways strikes, in which BA dismissed 15 flight attendants for sending threatening messages via Facebook to those trying to prevent industrial action.

Speaking to a cross section of the Kingston University population immediately shows that the frequency of such occurrences is growing.

One student, who did not want to be named, revealed that colleagues at his workplace were sacked when managers found a YouTube video of them wrapping themselves in cling film and throwing themselves at refrigerators while on duty.

Students are somewhat divided in opinion on whether this practice is morally or professionally justified. In one respect, they deem it an intrusion into their private lives and point out that Facebook is a social networking site, not a keyhole through which employers should be able to spy on their workers.

"We are more interested in meeting the candidates but we use Facebook to check people’s wall posts and status updates for anything inappropriate" Craig Jones 

“By looking at Facebook, employers are just making assumptions about an applicant when they should be making decisions based on the person and the CV in front of them. Facebook is a social thing so I think it is discriminatory in a way,” said Gary Wan, a second year computing with business student.

However Sunny Sandhu, a third year law student, sees little wrong with it and highlights the fact that Facebook provides the option of privacy settings so that users can limit the amount of access third parties have.

“I think it is perfectly fine for employers to check out prospective employees on Facebook, it is part of modern culture. You have to remember that when you set up a Facebook profile, you are choosing to put yourself in the public domain. It is up to you if you want to make your profile private,” he said.

So, is this an issue that lies at the doorstep of MySpace, Facebook and the rest? Facebook recently scrapped its plan to change its secrecy policies after the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) threatened to lodge a formal complaint against it. The new plans were set to place more control of information in the hands of Facebook but the recoil from EPIC and the site’s users forced Facebook to back down and reintroduce their original terms and conditions.

Xavier Izaguirre at Social Media Library, experts in the use of social media, feels that social networking sites need to make their position on privacy and information sharing more transparent.

“In terms of monitoring employees, as in the case of BA, while is partially true that employees shouldn’t be misbehaving in the first place, it is totally inappropriate that some networks will not make entirely clear or else overtly confusing how the information you share, or others about you, will spread. This is why Facebook is under fire right now,” he said.

Legally there is nothing to stop employers using Facebook for this purpose and in certain lines of work, having access to information applicants would not necessarily disclose during an interview is highly beneficial. Craig Jones, operations director at Fit For Sport, an organisation that educates children on the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, tells that in an age where child protection laws have become so prominent, Facebook is a way of ensuring that the people they employ are most suitable.

“We are more interested in meeting the candidates but we use Facebook to check people’s wall posts and status updates for anything inappropriate, like drugs. Although I personally feel it is an invasion of privacy, it means we are more likely to get the right people for the job,” said Craig.

But there is a grey area for which the law offers no remedy. Caroline Wilson, lecturer in intellectual property law at Southampton University highlights: “Say I have a Facebook page and have utilised the higher privacy settings.  Nevertheless, one of my ‘friends’ passes information from my Facebook page to my employer, prospective employer or to an agent acting on behalf of the same.  What would be the outcome here?”

Clearly, users have no control over this scenario under current legislation yet all of the students RiverOnline spoke to were adamant they would not go to the extreme of deleting their profile. Instead, they would consider changing their username to something employers would not think to search. Others suggested being more diligent with the privacy settings Facebook offers.

As long as there is something to talk about, that passed driving test, that great exam result or that memorable night out, Facebook will continue to serve as a playground for all the latest gossip. But businesses have interests to protect and use Facebook as a filter to find their dream employee.

While the ethical and legal implications of this employer practice will continue to be wrangled, Facebook is part of the fabric of 21^st century life and this issue is something users’ might have to agree to disagree on to find the perfect balance between business and pleasure.