Data mining in relation to employees online and offline - laughter and tears
If you do not have paranoia - it does not mean that you are not being watched.
Inspired by a recent topic about Google. So, as far as I know, datamining with respect to employees has been used by firms for a long time and persistently, and for some reason, unfortunately, I have not heard of cases when employee data were collected and used for their benefit. At once I will make a reservation that in most cases datamining is somehow legitimized (mainly by passages in an employment contract). But these formulations are interpreted extremely widely and always in one direction. There are, of course, cases when a firm collects data secretly, by engaging its own anti-corruption departments or specialized subcontractors and hopes that no one will know about the search and use of employee data.
I will tell about several cases, and you, please, tell and comment too. The purpose of the topic is to exchange the known.
')
- One of the last noisy cases: the German railways, Deutsche Bahn, were given a task by a certain subcontractor specializing in datamining to compare the data on all their employees and their relatives with those entered into the state commercial court (an organization that registers all commercial enterprises without exception Germany). Thus, Deutsche Bahn hoped to identify incidents of corruption. In this way: for example, an employee of a company is engaged in the purchase of components or the distribution of orders to third firms. His relative registers a company, receives an order / delivers components (at inflated prices or not - for them it is insignificant). And now, supposedly, this method of identifying the transfer of orders to relatives was to some extent successful. An interesting fact is that a specialized subcontractor – firm engaged in the collection and comparison of data, worked in direct contact with the internal department to combat corruption and received exactly the same order for the exact same job from other giants of the German market: Deutsche Telekom and Lufthansa. Such interaction gave, of course, many advantages in the performance of work. The task also included finding out such things as: whether the employees of these companies do not receive bonus points on personal accounts for work flights, whether employees do not exceed the limit of private telephone conversations from work numbers, whether employees use working bonus rail cards for private journeys. Having access to the databases of employees and customers of railways, the largest airline and the largest provider of landline and mobile telephony, many reasonable conclusions can be made. But, oddly enough, this method from the point of view of German law is illegal, and the main people from the leadership of the railways and telecom were forced to leave the posts.
- Another case: The grocery store network collected data on employee exits to the hospital and diagnoses, asking employees about this with addiction and pressure. This was done to optimize production, namely, the dismissal of employees in case of suspected more or less serious diseases. (so you do not have to pay long hospital). This case became known by chance - on the dustbin they found, by chance, not destroyed manuscripts of one branch director, which he was obliged to! present and comment in a regular conversation with the head of the region.
- Another interesting case: a network of retailers of cheap clothes bought up data on the credit histories of all its employees, ostensibly with the aim of not engaging employees with consumer loans at the cash desks. In practice, they were simply fired, so as not to tempt.
- It is also often practiced by automated viewing of e-mails of employees on certain keywords, especially in enterprises that are preparing to enter the stock exchange or already trade their shares on it. They explain this with preventive protection from information leakage in the media and protection of their own stock price.
- Recently, one employee of an insurance company was fired for visiting Facebook while on sick leave. As it turned out, the company had its character on Facebook, which tracked the movements of employees.
- A curious incident occurred at a large firm, where cameras were installed, ostensibly to curb sexual harassment in the workplace, and then reduced the salary of those who were filmed in a smoking room.
- The university of one city made doctors massively disclose medical secrets. Hospital exams issued to students and exams missed by these students were compared. The university decided that some of the sick-lists were burned and were going to send them for examination.
- Detectives, working in stores and watching customers, so that the sausage is not tyril, were instructed for optimal loading to collect personal data of employees from their conversations among themselves: the employing company was especially interested in women’s conversations among themselves and their desire to give birth to a child. They were fired immediately - and then the firm is obliged to pay a woman maintenance during pregnancy and after the birth of the child, and in addition to keep the young mother at the workplace to which she should be able to return to the law.
- The management of a certain spa / wellness hotel regularly arranges honey. inspections by employees, taking care of their health. Then, by gaining access to the inspection data, he dismisses those who exceed the height-to-weight ratio by weight - full employees, according to management, compromise the hotel.
- Well, the most fantastic case: the company employees were implanted with RFID chips, ostensibly to replace chip card passes. What information these chips carry besides ID is unknown. This news, by the way, is the oldest - the 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, datamining with respect to employees has been used by firms for a long time and persistently, and for some reason, unfortunately, I have not heard of cases when employee data were collected and used for their benefit. At once I will make a reservation that in most cases datamining is somehow legitimized (mainly by passages in an employment contract). But these formulations are interpreted extremely widely and always in one direction. There are, of course, cases when a firm collects data secretly, by engaging its own anti-corruption departments or specialized subcontractors and hopes that no one will know about the search and use of employee data.
I will tell about several cases, and you, please, tell and comment too. The purpose of the topic is to exchange the known.
')
- One of the last noisy cases: the German railways, Deutsche Bahn, were given a task by a certain subcontractor specializing in datamining to compare the data on all their employees and their relatives with those entered into the state commercial court (an organization that registers all commercial enterprises without exception Germany). Thus, Deutsche Bahn hoped to identify incidents of corruption. In this way: for example, an employee of a company is engaged in the purchase of components or the distribution of orders to third firms. His relative registers a company, receives an order / delivers components (at inflated prices or not - for them it is insignificant). And now, supposedly, this method of identifying the transfer of orders to relatives was to some extent successful. An interesting fact is that a specialized subcontractor – firm engaged in the collection and comparison of data, worked in direct contact with the internal department to combat corruption and received exactly the same order for the exact same job from other giants of the German market: Deutsche Telekom and Lufthansa. Such interaction gave, of course, many advantages in the performance of work. The task also included finding out such things as: whether the employees of these companies do not receive bonus points on personal accounts for work flights, whether employees do not exceed the limit of private telephone conversations from work numbers, whether employees use working bonus rail cards for private journeys. Having access to the databases of employees and customers of railways, the largest airline and the largest provider of landline and mobile telephony, many reasonable conclusions can be made. But, oddly enough, this method from the point of view of German law is illegal, and the main people from the leadership of the railways and telecom were forced to leave the posts.
- Another case: The grocery store network collected data on employee exits to the hospital and diagnoses, asking employees about this with addiction and pressure. This was done to optimize production, namely, the dismissal of employees in case of suspected more or less serious diseases. (so you do not have to pay long hospital). This case became known by chance - on the dustbin they found, by chance, not destroyed manuscripts of one branch director, which he was obliged to! present and comment in a regular conversation with the head of the region.
- Another interesting case: a network of retailers of cheap clothes bought up data on the credit histories of all its employees, ostensibly with the aim of not engaging employees with consumer loans at the cash desks. In practice, they were simply fired, so as not to tempt.
- It is also often practiced by automated viewing of e-mails of employees on certain keywords, especially in enterprises that are preparing to enter the stock exchange or already trade their shares on it. They explain this with preventive protection from information leakage in the media and protection of their own stock price.
- Recently, one employee of an insurance company was fired for visiting Facebook while on sick leave. As it turned out, the company had its character on Facebook, which tracked the movements of employees.
- A curious incident occurred at a large firm, where cameras were installed, ostensibly to curb sexual harassment in the workplace, and then reduced the salary of those who were filmed in a smoking room.
- The university of one city made doctors massively disclose medical secrets. Hospital exams issued to students and exams missed by these students were compared. The university decided that some of the sick-lists were burned and were going to send them for examination.
- Detectives, working in stores and watching customers, so that the sausage is not tyril, were instructed for optimal loading to collect personal data of employees from their conversations among themselves: the employing company was especially interested in women’s conversations among themselves and their desire to give birth to a child. They were fired immediately - and then the firm is obliged to pay a woman maintenance during pregnancy and after the birth of the child, and in addition to keep the young mother at the workplace to which she should be able to return to the law.
- The management of a certain spa / wellness hotel regularly arranges honey. inspections by employees, taking care of their health. Then, by gaining access to the inspection data, he dismisses those who exceed the height-to-weight ratio by weight - full employees, according to management, compromise the hotel.
- Well, the most fantastic case: the company employees were implanted with RFID chips, ostensibly to replace chip card passes. What information these chips carry besides ID is unknown. This news, by the way, is the oldest - the implantation of chips occurred in 2006.
ps: almost all of these cases became known in 2008–2009 in Germany and Switzerland.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/60105/
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