May 21, 2009 at 06:39Data mining in relation to employees online and offline - laughter and tears
If you do not have paranoia, this does not mean that you are not being watched.
Inspired by a recent topic about Google. So, as far as I know, dataming in relation to employees has been used by firms for a long time and hard, and for some reason, unfortunately, I have not heard of cases where employee data was collected and used to their advantage. I must say right away that in most cases, dataming is in some way legitimized (mainly by passages in an employment contract). But these formulations are interpreted extremely widely and always in one direction. Of course, there are times when a company collects data secretly, by using its own anti-corruption departments or specialized subcontractors and hopes that no one will know the search and use of data about employees.
I’ll tell you about several cases, and you, please, tell and comment too. The purpose of the topic is to exchange recognized.
- One of the last noisy cases: the German railways, Deutsche Bahn, instructed a certain sub-contracting company specializing in dataming to compare data on all their employees and their relatives with entries in the state commercial court (an organization that registers all commercial enterprises without exception Germany). In this way, Deutsche Bahn hoped to detect corruption. In this way: for example, an employee of a company is engaged in the purchase of components or in the distribution of orders to third companies. His relative registers the company, receives an order / supplies components (at inflated prices or not - it is not important for them). And so, supposedly this method of detecting the transfer of orders to relatives was somewhat successful. An interesting fact is that a specialized subcontractor is a company engaged in the collection and comparison of data, worked in direct contact with the internal anti-corruption department and received exactly the same order for the exact same work from other giants of the German market: Deutsche Telekom and Lufthansa. Such interaction gave, of course, many advantages when performing work. The assignment also included finding out things such as: whether employees of these firms do not receive bonus points on personal accounts for work flights, whether employees exceed the limit of private telephone calls from work numbers, or if employees use working bonus cards of railways for private trips. Having access to the databases of employees and customers of the railways, the largest airline and the largest provider of landline and mobile telephony, many reasonable conclusions can be drawn. But, oddly enough,
- Another case: A chain of grocery stores collected data on employees ’outpatient leave and diagnoses, asking employees about it with bias and pressure. This was done to optimize production, namely the dismissal of employees with suspicion of more or less serious diseases. (so that you do not have to pay long sick leave). This case became known by chance - on the garbage bin they accidentally found the unwritten manuscripts of one director of the branch, which he was obliged to! present and comment in a regular conversation with the head of the region.
- Another interesting case: the retail network of cheap clothes bought up data on the credit histories of all its employees, supposedly with the goal of not involving employees with consumer loans at the box office. In practice, they were simply fired so as not to tempt.
- It is also often practiced to automatically scan employees' emails for certain keywords, especially at enterprises that are preparing to enter the stock exchange or are already trading their shares on it. They explain this by preventive protection against information leakage in the media and by protecting the price of their own shares.
- Recently, one employee of an insurance company was fired for visiting Facebook while on sick leave. As it turned out, the company had its own Facebook character, which tracked the movements of employees.
- A curious incident occurred at one large company, where they installed cameras, supposedly to suppress sexual harassment in the workplace, and then lowered the salary of those whom the video was captured in a smoking room.
- The university of one city made doctors massively disclose medical confidentiality. The sick leave certificates and those passed by these students were compared. The university decided that some of the sick-lists were singed and was going to send them for examination.
- Detectives working in stores and watching customers so that they do not grill sausages were instructed to collect personal data from their conversations with each other for optimal loading: the employer company was particularly interested in the conversations of women among themselves and their desire expressed in the conversation to have a baby. Such people were fired right away - because the company is obliged to pay the woman upkeep during pregnancy and after the birth of the baby, and in addition to keep the young mother a job that she should be able to return to by law.
- The management of a certain spa / wellness hotel regularly arranges honey. Inspections to employees, taking care of their health. Then, gaining access to the inspection data, he dismisses those who exceed the height / weight ratio by weight - full employees, according to the concepts of management, compromise the hotel.
- Well, the most fantastic case: the company's employees were implanted with RFID chips, supposedly to replace chip cards-passes. What information these chips carry except for ID is unknown. This news, by the way, is the oldest - implantation of chips occurred in 2006.
ps: almost all of these cases became known in 2008-2009 in Germany and Switzerland.
Inspired by a recent topic about Google. So, as far as I know, dataming in relation to employees has been used by firms for a long time and hard, and for some reason, unfortunately, I have not heard of cases where employee data was collected and used to their advantage. I must say right away that in most cases, dataming is in some way legitimized (mainly by passages in an employment contract). But these formulations are interpreted extremely widely and always in one direction. Of course, there are times when a company collects data secretly, by using its own anti-corruption departments or specialized subcontractors and hopes that no one will know the search and use of data about employees.
I’ll tell you about several cases, and you, please, tell and comment too. The purpose of the topic is to exchange recognized.
- One of the last noisy cases: the German railways, Deutsche Bahn, instructed a certain sub-contracting company specializing in dataming to compare data on all their employees and their relatives with entries in the state commercial court (an organization that registers all commercial enterprises without exception Germany). In this way, Deutsche Bahn hoped to detect corruption. In this way: for example, an employee of a company is engaged in the purchase of components or in the distribution of orders to third companies. His relative registers the company, receives an order / supplies components (at inflated prices or not - it is not important for them). And so, supposedly this method of detecting the transfer of orders to relatives was somewhat successful. An interesting fact is that a specialized subcontractor is a company engaged in the collection and comparison of data, worked in direct contact with the internal anti-corruption department and received exactly the same order for the exact same work from other giants of the German market: Deutsche Telekom and Lufthansa. Such interaction gave, of course, many advantages when performing work. The assignment also included finding out things such as: whether employees of these firms do not receive bonus points on personal accounts for work flights, whether employees exceed the limit of private telephone calls from work numbers, or if employees use working bonus cards of railways for private trips. Having access to the databases of employees and customers of the railways, the largest airline and the largest provider of landline and mobile telephony, many reasonable conclusions can be drawn. But, oddly enough,
- Another case: A chain of grocery stores collected data on employees ’outpatient leave and diagnoses, asking employees about it with bias and pressure. This was done to optimize production, namely the dismissal of employees with suspicion of more or less serious diseases. (so that you do not have to pay long sick leave). This case became known by chance - on the garbage bin they accidentally found the unwritten manuscripts of one director of the branch, which he was obliged to! present and comment in a regular conversation with the head of the region.
- Another interesting case: the retail network of cheap clothes bought up data on the credit histories of all its employees, supposedly with the goal of not involving employees with consumer loans at the box office. In practice, they were simply fired so as not to tempt.
- It is also often practiced to automatically scan employees' emails for certain keywords, especially at enterprises that are preparing to enter the stock exchange or are already trading their shares on it. They explain this by preventive protection against information leakage in the media and by protecting the price of their own shares.
- Recently, one employee of an insurance company was fired for visiting Facebook while on sick leave. As it turned out, the company had its own Facebook character, which tracked the movements of employees.
- A curious incident occurred at one large company, where they installed cameras, supposedly to suppress sexual harassment in the workplace, and then lowered the salary of those whom the video was captured in a smoking room.
- The university of one city made doctors massively disclose medical confidentiality. The sick leave certificates and those passed by these students were compared. The university decided that some of the sick-lists were singed and was going to send them for examination.
- Detectives working in stores and watching customers so that they do not grill sausages were instructed to collect personal data from their conversations with each other for optimal loading: the employer company was particularly interested in the conversations of women among themselves and their desire expressed in the conversation to have a baby. Such people were fired right away - because the company is obliged to pay the woman upkeep during pregnancy and after the birth of the baby, and in addition to keep the young mother a job that she should be able to return to by law.
- The management of a certain spa / wellness hotel regularly arranges honey. Inspections to employees, taking care of their health. Then, gaining access to the inspection data, he dismisses those who exceed the height / weight ratio by weight - full employees, according to the concepts of management, compromise the hotel.
- Well, the most fantastic case: the company's employees were implanted with RFID chips, supposedly to replace chip cards-passes. What information these chips carry except for ID is unknown. This news, by the way, is the oldest - implantation of chips occurred in 2006.
ps: almost all of these cases became known in 2008-2009 in Germany and Switzerland.