Since at least 2014 several issues
concerning the private life of employees have been comprehensively recorded and
stored from the company H&M at Nuremberg, Germany. This data collection
became public due to a technical configuration error in October 2019.
An example of this situation is that the
company stored and exploited detailed information on the symptoms of illness
and diagnoses of the employees, while some supervisors used information that
they heard by accident, for instance about family problems and religious
beliefs.
Such data has been stored on the network drive, which could be accessed by up to 50 managers of the company. This network drive was used to evaluate the performance of the employees and to make employment decisions.
As a result according to an announcement on October 1, 2020 by the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, H&M is fined in the amount of 35.3 million euro for processing data concerning the private life of employees, making them available to up to 50 managers and making employment related decisions on these data. Therefore, H&M must introduce corrective measures, provide employees with damages and an apology.
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