In a Forsa survey for the digital association Bitkom, reported in January 2012, 56 percent of the employees among the respondents said they decline a friend request from their boss. Forsa had asked 1,002 German-speaking internet users. Bitkom’s Tobias Arns said: Die Privatsphäre der Mitarbeiter muss der Chef auch im Web akzeptieren. The boss must accept the employees’ private sphere on the web too. A later Bitkom survey, reported in 2014, found that only 5 percent were already friends with their boss online.