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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.