Found confidential info about myself at work

[Polly345]

A couple of days ago I was tidying a shelving unit when I found copies of letters sent to me after a period of sickness and also a printout of the number of times I had been off sick in the preceding 2 years.
These letters were several months old so they had been there for a while.
I was quite surprised to see this personal information on a shelf where a large number of people could have seen it. I'm trying to think of it as a mistake but I didn't like the feeling I had when I found it all.

Complain to HR. That's a data breach.

Take it up with your Manager, and ask why this was left where anyone could have seen it. It's a breach of confidentiality.
Don't wait for your next supervision session, do it tomorrow

God - if it was in my pigeonhole I'm really sorry
I don't know where your personal file is and haven't gotten round to making a new one. But no one else apart from me should be looking there?

This is really poor and since so many companies should be in hyper vigilant mode following GDPR regs, pretty shocking. It is special category data and a serious breach. This needs raising as others have said ASAP.

I’m sure it was a mistake but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be taking it up with HR. Leaving personal data about an employee lying around for anyone else to come across is unacceptable and printing off the absence stats was probably unnecessary and an example of very poor data protection practice.

Let’s hope they’ve heard of GDPR and take this seriously.

Report it as a data breach
Very stupid

They could be fined a serious amount of money under GDPR legislation.

Data breach definitely.

I would consider who left them there and why before I rush in to make a complaint.

A few years ago, some confidential monitoring information about an individual's attendance and various other things was left in our photocopying room. The individual in question had a serious illness and the monitoring information was being specially collected as part of a campaign to bully manage them out of their job. It was put there so that individual and everyone else might know what was going on.

I hope that is not what is happening to you and this is just carelessness.

Gin what?

This happened to me a couple of years ago. My sickness absence form was found in an envelope in a cupboard in open plan office. luckily the envelope had my name on it and was found by a friend of mine. My manager just said it was a mistake and I was too upset to make a huge fuss, as I was in a vulnerable place at the time. Wish I had put in a proper complaint though

Yes, definitely bring it up and make sure they log the incident as a data breach. Can’t believe it’s just been left lying around after all this GDPR everyone has been doing! If you wanted to get really serious about it you could contact the Information Commissioner’s Office and see if they want to get involved.

GDPR, GDPR, GDPR!!! Jesus report it as a breach. They need to know what has happened so they know if they need to report it. They only have 72 hours to do so if the ICO need to be informed.

God - if it was in my pigeonhole I'm really sorry
I don't know where your personal file is and haven't gotten round to making a new one. But no one else apart from me should be looking there?

I really do hope you aren’t responsible for anyone’s personal files, there is no excuse to “lose” a file. And a pigeonhole is no place for other people’s personal paperwork.

polly speak to your manager and ask them to deal with it.

I would report to the Data Protection Officer at work. Realistically the will not be fined and it is unlikely they will have to report to the ICO but it should be logged and investigated internally.

Even if it's possibly Ben dine deliberately, I'd report it.

*been done

GDPR GDPR GDPR! Not on.

Meanwhile back on planet earth:

1. Your colleagues will have known you were sick, so that is not 'news' to anyone.

2. You may even have told them what was wrong with you - (we do in our office),

So, yes, a tad unfortunate, but I can't really see the drama.

The whole of MN always wants to 'report' something...

I am not really sure.
If it disclosed the reasons for your absence maybe, but i don't think the number of sick days in itself is personal data.

but i don't think the number of sick days in itself is personal data.

It would be under the definition of personal data under the legislation if the sheet had the OP's name or other identifier on it.

Can I gatecrash thread and ask is the following also a data breach?

Manager has whiteboard in office with a “pregnancy list”. So names of staff with their due date and names are often up before they’ve told people at work they’re pregnant. People are in and out the office all the time.

There’s also a sickness list with date that sick notes run out.

topcat makes good points, everyone knows when someone is off in our office and normally why.
I think I'll do some scanning tomorrow though !

Penguin Yes, if colleagues want that information to remain confidential - and it appears they do given you said it's before they've properly broken the news sometimes - that is a data protection breach. Would be raising this with whoever is responsible for data protection at your organisation and if you're unsure, then HR.