For the FBI specifically
I have been following polygraph policy at various federal agencies, including the FBI, for more than 25 years, and to the best of my knowledge, FBI applicants are not routinely asked about their social media accounts as part of the polygraph process. If anyone knows otherwise, I would be interested to hear about that.
In polygraph…just about anything is fair game. If you bring it up.
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@AntiPolygraph.org you probably know that after 25 years of being online, the pro-polygraph community has been told to ignore and discredit you. You are sharing truthful information that the government does not want you to about the polygraph because they are still trying to hide the polygraph secrets and your site is the biggest threat. The polygraph is the magical tool of the government to extract or coerce confessions. They have intentionally reduced the Google search ranking for Antipolygraph .org, banned you from the /r/securityclearance subreddit and other sites, told applicants to stay away from your site, and they assume that as you get older and further removed from the cleared community, you and you website will eventually . . . well . . . die. Just like Doug Williams and his site. Sorry man. However, I will answer.
What @Amberbunny2 said is highly pertinent! The polygraphers can and will ask anything. The social media questions may not be part of the actual polygraph questions (for now) that applicants are asked when the machine is on and the session is ongoing, but, there is also the pre-test, post-test, and questions asked in between sessions (when the machines is purportedly turned off, though it likely is not). All three of these segments are interrogations. The polygrapher will lead the applicants down the path of opening a door to an area for more interrogation. For example, foreign contacts are now of grave concern and polygraphers WILL ask about contacts on social media. Polygraphers WILL ask applicants which messaging apps and social media they use mostly and if they ever talked to or met a foreign contact in person. If the applicant met the foreign contact in person, the polygrapher may even ask if the connection was intimate as a way to gauge the relationship.
The same thing goes for other adjudication criteria such as finances, criminal activity, drugs, allegiance to the U.S., etc. If you got a Bitcoin tip from a social media contact and now you are invested, the polygrapher will interrogate you on this as well. If you open the door to social media political discussions, the polygrapher WILL ask which apps and sites you use and interrogate you on your allegiance to the U.S. However, they won’t ask your screen name or ask you to divulge login info and passwords. I think that is strictly forbidden . . . for now . . .
This is 2025. Everyone knows social media is the way of life. So even though a polygraph session question won’t explicitly ask about social media, the polygrapher WILL interrogate the applicant on social media contacts and activity during the pre-test, post-test, and between the actual polygraph question sessions.
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Spot. On. When told yes or no answers only…and asked an open ended question…tell them “yes no answers only”. Not saying hide anything…but dont take the session down paths it wouldn’t go.
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I will add that applicants’ are now frequently asked what social media sites and apps that they use, especially if they have traveled internationally. This is not part of the polygraph question sets but will be part of the interrogations when you think the machine has been turned off. If you mention any foreign-specific apps that no normal U.S. citizen would use, it will raise a major flag.