Maid agencies rapped for posting employers' full names and addresses online
Privacy commissioner raps industry leaders for illegally disclosing the full names and addresses of their domestic helpers' former employers
Two of the city's 10 largest employment agencies for domestic helpers have been warned after they were found to have illegally disclosed the full names and addresses of their helpers' former employers on their websites, the privacy watchdog says.
The two agencies - Megasea Employment Agency and A&E Employment Centre, which posted the personal information of 30 and 10 local employers respectively - have since taken the information offline, after the privacy watchdog sent them enforcement notices last Friday.
All 10 of the agencies were also found to have posted online almost 3,000 helpers' full names and addresses, as well as their Hong Kong ID or passport numbers, said the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data yesterday.
Describing the personal information collected and published online as "irrelevant" to screening by prospective employers, Chiang said the practice constituted a breach of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance.
Offenders who fail to comply with an enforcement notice can be fined HK$50,000 and jailed for two years. "The possible secondary use of such data is beyond the average person's anticipation or comprehension and definitely very difficult to control," Chiang said.
The privacy commissioner said there was a risk that anyone could copy and retain the information obtained online and even integrate it with other fragments of data about the same person collected elsewhere, and use it for illegal purposes.