Despite the national trend of employers asking interviewees for their Facebook passwords, some Boston companies said they do not ask for access to social networking sites to evaluate candidates.

Last week, Facebook released a statement on their site regarding the recent trend, acknowledged by U.S. senators, of employers asking for applicants’ Facebook passwords.

“This practice undermines the privacy expectations and the security of both the user and the user’s friends,” Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan said in the statement. “It also potentially exposes the employer who seeks this access to unanticipated legal liability.”

Egan said employers asking for employees’ passwords is not the right thing to do and may cause potential discrimination claims against the employers themselves.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, is working on legislation that would make this practice illegal.

The issue, however, may not be widespread in Boston, as some Boston employers said they do not ask for employees’ Facebook passwords.

Lu Ann Reeb, founder and president of Boston Media Group, said social media has become the first stop after reading a resume.

“It’s public information, that’s the bottom line,” Reeb said. “Asking for a password? That’s where I say no.”

Reeb compared it to asking someone for his or her age and said that asking for a password is completely inappropriate.

“From a recruiting standpoint, employers who ask for access to private profiles are likely to deter a lot of qualified candidates from wanting to work at that organization,” said Ryan Hunt, a career adviser from CareerBuilder, “so it’s still best to learn about each candidate from interviews, resumes and references.”

But Hunt said people can learn a lot about another person through social media, which is why employers are browsing prospective employees’ profiles before or after their interview.

Hunt referenced a CareerBuilder survey that showed 45 percent of employers used social networking sites to research potential employees and another 11 percent are planning to do so.

Information technology and professional and business services were the top industries most likely to screen potential applicants through social networking sites or search engines, according to the survey.

Of those who studied potential employees online, 29 percent used Facebook, 26 percent used LinkedIn, 21 percent used MySpace, 11 percent searched blogs and 7 percent followed them on Twitter, according to the survey.

The survey showed applicants were not selected for the job due to reasons such as provocative or inappropriate content, alcohol or drug use, posting bad comments about a previous employer and lying about their qualifications.

It reported some of what employers found was actually beneficial for the applicant. Social networking revealed the candidate’s personality to the employers, displaying if they were creative or well rounded.

Michael Durand, a spokesman for NStar, a gas and electric utility company, said NStar does not use social media networks to assess potential applicants or monitor existing employees.

“Our use of social media is limited to posting information about company or industry-related topics and job openings,” Durand said.

Christina Luconi, chief people officer for Rapid7, a company that specializes in security for companies’ websites and networks, said asking for someone’s social media password is completely illegal and something Rapid7 never does.

“Everyone’s life is out there now,” Luconi said. “If there’s something fundamentally stupid out there, take it down.”

The only type of social media regulation Rapid7 enforces is publicly tweeting under the Rapid7 name and posts the company makes on its own Facebook page, Luconi said.

“Anything on behalf of the company is controlled,” Luconi said. “We expect that people will act like professionals otherwise.”

Rapid7 also often uses LinkedIn to find new people, Luconi said.

“Social media is probably 75 to 80 percent of our method to find candidates,” Luconi said.

Boston U. freshman Valerie Shahal  said she would not give employers her Facebook password and would only show them her profile.

“In a way, it makes sense because they want to see,” Shahal said. “But on the other hand we shouldn’t have other people viewing our things. I think it’s invading our privacy because we could be very good at our job and we can do stuff outside.”

Shahal said something immoral, such as drug use, should influence whether or not the applicant gets the job because it could influence his or her performance.