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Supreme Court To Consider Data Aggregation Suit Against Spokeo
BUL2294 writes: Consumerist and Associated Press are reporting that the Supreme Court has taken up the case of Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins — a case where Spokeo, as a data aggregator, faces legal liability and Fair Credit Reporting Act violations for providing information on Thomas Robins, an individual who has not suffered "a specific harm" directly attributable to the inaccurate data Spokeo collected on him.
From SCOTUSblog: "Robins, who filed a class-action lawsuit, claimed that Spokeo had provided flawed information about him, including that he had more education than he actually did, that he is married although he remains single, and that he was financially better off than he actually was. He said he was unemployed and looking for work, and contended that the inaccurate information would make it more difficult for him to get a job and to get credit and insurance." So, while not suffering a specific harm, the potential for harm based on inaccurate data exists. Companies such as Facebook and Google are closely watching this case, given the potential of billions of dollars of liability for selling inaccurate information on their customers and other people.
From SCOTUSblog: "Robins, who filed a class-action lawsuit, claimed that Spokeo had provided flawed information about him, including that he had more education than he actually did, that he is married although he remains single, and that he was financially better off than he actually was. He said he was unemployed and looking for work, and contended that the inaccurate information would make it more difficult for him to get a job and to get credit and insurance." So, while not suffering a specific harm, the potential for harm based on inaccurate data exists. Companies such as Facebook and Google are closely watching this case, given the potential of billions of dollars of liability for selling inaccurate information on their customers and other people.
... "attributable to the inaccurate data Spokeo collected on him." If a company is in the clear for publishing inaccurate data about an individual, are they also in the clear for just fabricating data? What's to say that any of the names in their lists represent real and physical people with the same name? In theory the users entered the data at one point or another and that should be enough to tie the data to a real human. BUT any coder knows it's not rocket science to write a script to fill in a form and submit it. Consider tools like Faker https://github.com/fzaninotto/....
Unless, of course, his resume goes into the round file because it doesn't agree with "known" information about him.
I once failed a background check because a former employer gave me a more _senior_ title than the one I actually held. I had to get them to correct it before I could be hired (into my present position).
The hiring company HR department behaves as if their job is to help the line manager get and keep the right people, so they were willing to sort out the mess. In other places, I would never have known what happend.
So this is a real problem.
I find it rather ironic, that the same site, which shouts down any attempts to reason that an idea can be owned — and that using it without the owner's permission is illegal and immoral — would be so respectful towards other kinds of information.
If, as the opinion prevailing here holds, "information can not be stolen" because you still have your original copy, what grounds are there to prohibit somebody else to share, what they know about you, with others? On that matter, will you also outlaw gossip?
Except the term coercion implies use of force. As long as you aren't forced to use a web-site despite your disagreement with their EULA, you can not complain of being "coerced".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It doesn't work that way.
If you are listed with a title of CEO/President at a small company then apply for a project manager job in a Fortune 50 company, HR there will think you aren't serious or need any job badly or some other bad thing happened at the former company/employer. What if you never worked at that company at all?
All of these things weaken your ability to negotiate for reasonable and fair compensation if a job offer even comes. Since you didn't work there, it won't be on your resume and if you've been out of work for a few years - just like many other people have - the gap may appear to HR-drones as hiding a job. Enron people did that, since working at Enron wasn't exactly something to be proud about.
While not being visible or accurate, HR departments DO web searches and they DO read false statements. THAT causes harm - even if they just don't contact you after reviewing the resume due to these false statements online.
Spokeo is one of the worst of these data vendors, IMHO. The record they have for me is inaccurate too. It says that I was employed by a company I was NOT employed by, worked on a project that I didn't work on (which was a $500M failure), etc ... all wrong. I'm actually surprised they spelled my last name (fairly unique in the world) correctly.
Zattadata has a record for me where everything except the name and address is completely inaccurate. For example, their guess at income, real estate value and net worth are all way off. The networth is off by 50x - think that might impact my negotiations with a potential employer?