Oklahoma has joined the 15 states upholding laws that protect residents from turning over their social media passwords to both current and prospective employers. This particular law, H.B. 2372, protects employees and applicants from having to share their passwords with their employers, or even from having to login to their account in front of their employers, and Oklahoma is certainly not one of the pioneers in this trend.
In early 2012, Maryland was the first state to pass a law which explicitly protected citizens from the requirement of disclosing their usernames and passwords for employment purposes. In addition, Maryland’s law also prohibited an employer from even the mere threat of discharging, disciplining, or penalizing the employee or applicant for refusing to do so. Since then, at least 15 states have joined Maryland in protecting citizens' rights to keep their social media accounts private, and 13 more have introduced similar legislation.
Even in states where social media specific laws don’t exist, common-law privacy principles can be invoked to protect the privacy rights of individuals who don’t want to share their account information with employers. While the practice of employers requesting an employee’s account information may not be widespread, this growing trend of protection for social media platforms demonstrate how greatly citizens value their accounts. States are recognizing that their citizens consider social media as a major part of their life, and as with any type of property, citizens want to ensure that their privacy rights are not infringed upon.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ (to name a few) have grown to be an integral part to the private and public lives of many. With such value placed on these platforms, more and more states are beginning to protect their citizens' rights to what is quickly becoming the major source of connection and communication to the world: social media.