Employee snooping a growing problem in New Zealand workplaces, Privacy Commissioner says
New Zealand's Privacy Commissioner warns that unauthorized employee snooping into private databases is a growing and under-reported issue. The office notes that such breaches range from inappropriate curiosity to criminal harassment.
Why it matters
It underscores the increasing risk of internal data misuse and the need for stronger organizational security protocols regarding employee access to sensitive information.
Unauthorised employee browsing, or snooping on private personal information of the public is a growing problem in New Zealand workplaces, according to the Privacy Commissioner.
Cyber hacks involving personal health information have hit the headlines this year, but Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster told Nine to Noon , 25 percent of reported privacy breaches now related to employee snooping and he believed the actual incidence was under-reported.
Webster said the reports he heard ranged from "pretty creepy" to even criminal unauthorised access to information.
In the past he said he had been informed of a customer in a department store who gave her address for delivery being contacted by the delivery person asking if she was single and a health professional sending inappropriate messages to a young female patient, after she came in for treatment, asking about the clothes she had been wearing.
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