According to a Tuesday report by MSNBC's Bob Sullivan, potential employees applying to the Maryland Department of Corrections are asked to log into their Facebook account during in-person interviews --- a trending move which underscores that employers are making attempts to know the latest about the online activities of their staff.

As per Sullivan's report, job seekers submitting their applications to the mentioned Maryland department are asked, during the course of the interviews , to log into their social network accounts so as to "let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall."

The new move by the department marks a change over its last year policy which, going by an earlier report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland, necessitated that the job-seekers provide the details about their Facebook login and passwords.

The authorities had claimed that time round that the key objective behind the move was to objective behind this to reject corrections officers who had any gang-related association.

Employers, in general, can sack employees if they make any job-related sleazy remarks in their Facebook or Google+ posts. The employees can keep abreast of the online activities of their workers with the help of an array of tools, including one from SocialIntel. com which offers "social media screening" via a "powerful, cost-effective method of alerting employers to social media policy violations."