Fashion company stops using fingerprint data for Hong Kong employees to clock on over privacy concerns
Privacy watchdog orders the fashion company to use a less intrusive method
A fashion company has stopped requiring employees to clock in and out using their fingerprints after the privacy commissioner stepped in.
Acting on a complaint by a former worker at Queenix (Asia), the office investigated the firm's use of a fingerprint recognition device that commissioner Allan Chiang Yam-wang described as "a vivid example of preferring the convenience and affordability of such devices to the neglect of the underlying privacy concerns".
The company said it used the technology to prevent theft and stop workers clocking in for each other.
But the office countered that the firm should use a less intrusive means to monitor staff attendance in a company that had few security concerns and just 20 employees.
It noted that previous thefts at the company were committed by staff and customers, which a fingerprint recognition device to stop unauthorised entry would not have prevented.
The office issued an enforcement notice directing Queenix to stop the collection of fingerprint data and to destroy all such records collected from past and current staff. The firm said in a written reply to the office on Monday that it had complied with the notice.
Offenders who fail to comply with an enforcement notice can be fined HK$50,000 and sentenced to two years in jail.
Over the past year the commissioner's office received 300 inquiries concerning the collection of fingerprint data and nine formal complaints.
The office also issued enforcement notices to 42 employers for publishing "blind ads" - in which the advertiser is not identified. It said the advertisers had solicited applicants' personal data in an unfair manner.
After examining almost 13,000 advertisements published in May, the office said the proportion of blind ads had dropped to 0.46 per cent of the total from 3.45 per cent last year, a result it attributed to more stringent gate-keeping by recruitment media after advice it released last year.
