As part of a draft for workplace privacy legislation in Germany there is proposal to include protection for job seekers on social networking sites such as Facebook.
This new law, if passed, would prevent managers and those responsible for hiring within organisations from searching through social networking sites for information on potential employees.
It would not, however, stop employers form looking through professional networking sites like LinkedIn or Xing.
This legislation would come as good news for potential employees who are already being scrutinised on Facebook and MySpace, if a UK study from earlier this year is anything to go by.
UK website CareerBuilder.co.uk found that 43pc of managers are using search engines to see what they can find outside of the CV and that 12pc said they go to Facebook and a further 12pc head to professional networking site LinkedIn.
Employers said that what they found online about potential employees had an effect on whether they were hired because 38pc found that a candidate lied about qualifications, 13pc saw that candidates have made discriminatory comments, while 10pc dug up content on potential employees talking about drinking or using drugs.
