Who owns your profile?

Bombaycrow has an interesting post about a UK court judgement. A former employee of Hays has been forced to give his former employer the details of the contacts he built up in LinkedIn whilst he was their employee.

This case does not necessarily mean employers can ask for a copy of your Facebook profile. Amongst the relevant factors in this case was the fact he had uploaded his work address book into LinkedIn and that the contacts in his LinkedIn profile had resulted in business being won by his new employer from his old employer.

This is an example of the the tension that is growing in some parts of business as a result of the merging of our private and business lives. I suspect there is a long way to go before we reach a settled understanding of what is private, what is public, and what is your employer's.

From a post by Emma Mulqueeny