Legal Counsel Looking At My LinkedIn

matttye

jamesd wrote: »

Anyone is technically capable of looking at it but a business is only permitted to do so if it has a legitimate business purpose. Antrobus, the Data Protection Act is the law that will have been broken if thee was no legitimate business purpose.

Grangers72, you might try calling the Information Commissioner's Office helpline to see what they think of it and suggest.

At the moment we simply don't know what the purpose was.

Simply viewing the profile probably doesn't qualify as processing data. If he did anything with the information on the profile, that would be another matter.

Johno100

jamesd wrote: »

Anyone is technically capable of looking at it but a business is only permitted to do so if it has a legitimate business purpose. Antrobus, the Data Protection Act is the law that will have been broken if thee was no legitimate business purpose.

Grangers72, you might try calling the Information Commissioner's Office helpline to see what they think of it and suggest.

At the moment we simply don't know what the purpose was.

Err...you do know what Linkedin is don't you?

DevCoder

There is no breach of the DPA in this instance.

The information is published in the public domain, even if the person viewing it then stores the information there would still be no DPA requirements.

LinkedIn have a DPA duty but they are not in any violation as the OP has chosen to mark the information as publicly available.

magpiecottage

krisdorey wrote: »

There is no breach of the DPA in this instance.

The information is published in the public domain, even if the person viewing it then stores the information there would still be no DPA requirements.

LinkedIn have a DPA duty but they are not in any violation as the OP has chosen to mark the information as publicly available.

That is the key point, isn't it.

The OP put personal data into the public domain of his own volition and is now complaining that somebody has had the audacity to look at it.

DevCoder

magpiecottage wrote: »

That is the key point, isn't it.

The OP put personal data into the public domain of his own volition and is now complaining that somebody has had the audacity to look at it.

Absolutely.

Now if the information was personal only to LinkedIn corporate eyes and they released this to Virgin because Virgin stated a debt was owed and they were looking to track the person in question then DPA kicks in.

However the DPA makes allowances for debt collection in this manner.

[citation] http://ico.org.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/the_guide/conditions_for_processing as linked above , see legitimate interests condition. [/citation]

The argument would then revolve around the fact a discharged bankrupt doesn't owe any debt. The creditor would counter-argue that they were making sure that assets were not hidden from the OR in the bankruptcy and the debate would go back and forth ad nauseam.

However as LinkedIn have not released any private information then the first hurdle hasn't even been reached as regards DPA.

tiger_eyes

This could be totally random - unrelated to your past bankruptcy.

jamesd

Johno100 wrote: »

Err...you do know what Linkedin is don't you?

Of course. LinkedIn has more than one view and some views have information that is not available in the view that is available to those who are not logged in. Since it's known who was looking we know at least that the person was logged in. The business would still need to meet one of the conditions of processing even for the public version.

Best for grangers72 to discuss with the ICO's helpline to see what they make of it, since they are the experts on what is and isn't OK.

matttye wrote: »

Simply viewing the profile probably doesn't qualify as processing data.

Perhaps. I think that it is unlikely that the Counsel just viewed random LinkedIn accounts.

More likely, if it was a business use, they looked at some database they already had and then used information from that as the basis for a search. Either the initial database access or search looks like processing to me. While the initial database access would be on information held already, it would be for the purpose of searching LinkedIn so looks like processing related to the viewing.

matttye wrote: »

If he did anything with the information on the profile, that would be another matter.

If it was for a business then the Counsel would presumably have had to make some sort of note somewhere about what the result of the search was and/or that it was carried out.

TheGardener

or the viewer could have just been wandering around on Linkdin and clicked on the OP randomly? I do it all the time...