Employers can’t ask about your age, your marital status, whether you have children, your citizenship, or if you have disabilities. But they can ask for your Facebook username and password.

The Associated Press reported this week on the practice of some employment interviewers who have decided that looking at what’s publicly available online isn’t enough. They want to get past applicants’ privacy settings to see everything.

The Facebook question apparently doesn’t violate employment law, although both Illinois and Maryland are considering legislation that would forbid it, according to the AP, and the American Civil Liberties Union has objected.

“It’s akin to requiring someone’s house keys,” Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor told the AP, calling it “an egregious privacy violation.”

It’s particularly ironic given the well-established body of legal proscriptions on what can be asked in a job interview. A report from Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa., notes that various state, federal and local rules apply, but it’s generally agreed that many ordinary questions like the ones above are off-limits. On the website HRWorld, interviewers are offered suggestions for ways to get around the many forbidden questions.

It appears those who are requesting Facebook information have found the ultimate way around those limits.

In a tough job market, applicants are in a no-win situation. Even if the request for the password is presented as voluntary, it’s obvious that a refusal won’t encourage a job offer. Many aren’t in a position to take that chance.

Employers do face a new reality in trying to learn enough about job seekers. Capt. Mike Harvey of the Spotsylvania County, Va., Sheriff’s Department, told the AP that his department asks applicants to grant access by friending investigators. He said the old-fashioned way of interviewing friends and neighbors doesn’t work anymore, because “their virtual friends will know more about them than a person living 30 yards away from them.”

One other twist: Facebook’s terms of service prohibit giving out login information, the AP reports, and going into a site in violation of those terms can be a federal crime. However, recent congressional testimony indicated there are no plans for prosecution in such cases.

It will take some time for the law to catch up with the new challenges for employment and social media. More protections are needed and inevitable. Even in an electronic world — or perhaps we should say especially in an electronic world — there must be room for privacy. Job seekers shouldn’t have to give it away to get a job.