Job seekers should be careful when providing personal data

1.    The Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Mr. Roderick Woo, urges members of the public, in particular fresh graduates and young people who are eagerly looking for summer jobs, to be prudent in handling their personal data in the course of job hunting.

2.    “During the summer holiday, many young people who lack social experience may easily fall for scams and suffer losses by providing personal data when desperately looking for jobs.  In this regard, I would like to remind young people not to blindly accede to requests for personal data when seeking jobs, especially when asked to provide copies of identity cards and financial information,” said Mr. Woo.

3.    In a recent court case that was heard last month in Hong Kong, job seekers were conned into providing personal data by an imaginary company.  In this case, a recruitment advertisement was posted on a government employment webpage by a pretend company.  At the job interview, three job seekers provided copies of their personal information such as identity cards and proof of residential address, which were then used to apply for credit cards and bank loans.  The three victims suffered a total loss of over $120,000.

4.    According to the Code of Practice on Human Resource Management (“the Code”) issued by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (“the PCPD”) in 2001, an employer should not collect identity card copies from a job applicant during the recruitment process unless and until the individual has accepted an offer of employment.

5.    As a matter of fact, job seekers should be mindful of blind recruitment advertisements, which provide no means of identifying either the employer or the employment agency acting on its behalf.  Under the Code, an employer or the employment agency acting on its behalf is not permitted to post a blind advertisement to solicit resumes from job applicants directly.  It is very unwise to rashly give your personal data to an unidentified organization and job applicants are strongly advised not to respond to any blind advertisements.

6.    For details of the Code, please visit the website of the PCPD (www.pcpd.org.hk/english/ordinance/code_hrm.html). For any queries, please call the hotline of the PCPD on 2827 2827.

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