PCPD - Mindful of providing personal data to others

Date: 19 February 2008

Mindful of providing personal data to others

1.    The Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Mr. Roderick B. Woo reminds parents that they should teach their children not to disclose their personal data to strangers recklessly.

2.    Recently, two parents have lodged complaints with the PCPD against two tutorial centres, complaining that their staff carried out door-to-door promotion of their tutorial services with the personal data of the complainants’ children in hand. The complainants said that they had never provided their children’s personal data to those tutorial centres. Therefore, they suspected that the centres had collected their children’s personal data by unlawful means and then made use of the data to promote tutorial services to them.

3.    Under Data Protection Principle 1(2) of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance, personal data shall be collected by means which are lawful and fair in the circumstances of the case.

4.    Upon investigation, it was found that the staff of the two tutorial centres had carried out surveys with the complainants’ children at home. In one of the cases, a child admitted that the staff of a tutorial centre had carried out a survey with him at home and collected his personal data, such as name, address and class, for the purpose of future door-to-door promotion of tutorial services. In the circumstances, there is no prima facie evidence showing contravention of the requirements of the Data Protection Principle by the tutorial centres.

5.    Mr. Woo said, “Personal data of oneself are very personal and valuable. Before understanding the purpose of personal data collection, members of the public should not recklessly disclose their personal data to strangers for benefit or convenience in order to avoid unnecessary losses.

6.    For children education, the PCPD has published a pamphlet on “Respect Others and Protect Privacy”, using living examples, games, magic and puzzles to raise their awareness of personal data protection. The pamphlets are available from the office of the PCPD or for download from the website of www.pcpd.org.hk.