Ask HN: A company just shared my contact details without asking me what do I do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: A company just shared my contact details without asking me what do I do?

6 pointsSamWhited9 comments

A company called Pana that schedules travel for interviews just reached out and told me they shared my information (presumably this means email and phone number, but I'm not sure) with Uber so I could book rides. Uber is a disgusting company that I want nothing to do with, and I certainly don't want them to have my email (they've already sent me one email since Pana shared my information). I did not sign an EULA or similar for Pana, Uber, or the company I was interviewing with.

Can they really just share my information like this? Do I have any recourse?

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First, I don’t have an answer, but I’m commenting because I was reminded of a recent experience I had.

Last week, I turned down a job offer, and it was largely influenced by the information the hiring agency, which the company went through, required me to provide. They wanted all kinds of information about me, and it was clear it was almost entirely unrelated to the company offering me the job. They simply wanted to add me to their line of products, whether I wanted them to advertise me or not. If I didn’t provide the information, I didn’t get processed.

Needless to say, I’m happily looking for employment elsewhere. I firmly believe this is both wrong, and a practice which should be illegal. If it isn’t already?

Well, it is in the EU. GDPR commonly is perceived as applying to online businesses alone, which of course is wrong.

As a company you’re only allowed to ask for and record the data that’s required to conduct the business at hand. Otherwise, you have to tell your customers how their data will be used.

This of course absolutely applies to traditionally offline businesses such as recruitment agencies as well.

Given they schedule travel on your behalf, and don’t actually provide transportation themselves, how would they be able to do this without sharing your information? Not saying what they did is necessarily right but this seems like a legitimate need. Seems like they should have made it clearer from the outset that they would do this though so you were in the know.

They probably can't, but they should ask permission first. I didn't sign an EULA or anything that asked if they could share my information with Uber.

Two (somewhat competing) thoughts:

1.) In the grand scheme of things, a company that books travel sharing your info with a company that provides rides isn’t the worst thing to ever happen in the world of privacy and interviews. You could take the nuclear option, which would involve naming and shaming Pana and potentially writing some letters. Depending on where you are, this could violate some privacy legislation. Or, you could decide that wasn’t too far out of line and merely ask Uber to delete your info and stop emailing you. And, you could keep the nuclear option in mind if they don’t respond.

2.) Anecdotally, the interview stage is the best that a company will get. If they’re already doing things you consider sketchy, I promise that things won’t magically get less sketchy when you take the job. I can think of two ‘opportunities’ I could have saved myself from if I had internalized that lesson.

I don't think the company I'm interviewing with did anything sketchy, to be clear. They just used yet another garbage startup that's solving a problem that doesn't exist, making the process harder, and can't be bothered to have any responsibility or consider that sharing someones contact details or setting up an account for them without their consent is not okay. It's Pana that's absolutely not okay in my book (although I suppose it's reasonable to say that the company I'm interviewing with should have seen this and avoided them).

Which country are you in? In the EU this could potentially be a violation of GDPR.

It doesn't matter really; so far my entire experience with GDPR is that people just claim they think you're not in the EU and tell you they won't remove any of your data (AirBNB did this for friends who tried to get their data deleted, and I've seen similar things from a number of companies who want proof that you're an EU resident, but I'm obviously not sending them even more info like a passport just to convince them to delete my data). I wish the GDPR had any teeth, but companies for now seem to think it doesn't.

I does have teeth, but you need to be willing to sue the company to force removal. Data protection agencies are swamped with complaints so you have to take things into your own hands. Article 79 opens up for civil action against data controllers that refuse to obey the GDPR. Data subjects can sue for compensation, but are probably not restricted to compensation. It's a reasonable interpretation of the GPDR that you can sue for deletion.

At the very least your friend should submit a complaint to his country's data protection agency.

In your case I absolutely think that you could have a valid claim for compensation. But the devil is in the detail. For example, on what legal basis is the company you interviewed with processing your data? On what basis is Pana processing it? If you're genuinely interested in trying to claim compensation you can reach out to me and I can give you some directions and reading tips.

EDIT: IANAL, but I work with data protection questions.

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