The ongoing Facebook privacy row has taken a new twist after the German government announced plans to restrict employers from using prospective employees public profile information hosted on Facebook in their employment decisions.

The measure is intended to draw a line between purely social networks, such as Facebook, and job related networking sites such as LinkedIn or Xing which can show up when employers trawl the web for background checks.

At present employers are free to use any publicly available information as they see fit.

The measure is contained within a draft law governing workplace privacy which will also prohibit companies from secretly videotaping employees and could be passed as early as next year.