Gdpr breach at work?

[Ereerenownow]

I've written on here a couple of times about issues at work but now a new problem has arisen, I think.
I an a private person and don't for example celebrate my birthday at work (though I obviously have a great time with friends and family).
Our office is big and busy and many people from different departments hot desk there. One young girl who uses our space has vague links to nhs via her community counselling work. She isn't employed by the nhs but has the logo on her lanyard as well as her charity's logo.
We are relatively friendly and have often chatted briefly in the kitchen while making a cuppa etc. One time she asked my age and birthday and i very politely said that i don't discuss those things at work. It was no big deal and we moved on to talk about other things.
Well this week she approached me with a wink and said, I know how old you are and you look great for your age and I'll give you a card on your birthday now.
I haven't told anyone else in the team my birthday and I don't believe myself and this lady have any friends in common...I am not on any social media.
I suspect she has access to at least some nhs files and databases and I'm worried that she has used her logins to access my records.
She's lovely but quite gossipy and I think she's capable of telling others in my team.
She also very vaguely alluded to a recent health issue I've had but didn't tell anyone about.
I admit given recent events at work, I'm slightly sensitive so I don't want to cause any problems if non exist.
Can I check to see if she's accessed my private nhs records? Am I just being paranoid?

Inappropriate for someone with counselling training to go and find out your DOB and then comment that you don't look your age: that for me would be the issue. Her boundaries are poor and she sounds intrusive and over-personal — absolutely not ideal for someone offering counselling who needs to be sensitive to boundaries. She makes the idea of a birthday card seem like a threat.

But you sound like a bit of a pill too, to be frank, OP. What's going on in your office that she'd ask and you wouldn't just laugh and make a date up if you didn't want her to know? Your DOB is on everything, from your driving licence to your passport and in many workplaces managers know and organise token birthday celebrations in the workplace. I know I'm old and out of the workforce now, but I still hear of people taking cake or fruit or chocolate in for their birthday work 'do'.

"you sound like a bit of a pill"

😅 She's probably just trying to avoid having to take her turn at picking up a couple of boxes of doughnuts on the way into the office.

Exactly my thoughts. Why would you want to get a colleague in trouble. I find it rather spiteful. You could just ask her, it could be entirely innocent.

Tell her on Monday you have reasons, that you do not wish to share, for keeping your personal information private and can she tell you directly where she found out the information.

If she is not willing to share tell her you will be talking it to your HR and her HR about an inappropriate workplace GDPR breach and also putting in a request to the NHS for an audit of access to your records.

It is not the kind of information a lot of people keep so private, but you don't need to justify or explain to anyone your reasons.

Are you on social media, could she have looked you up on FB. Either way she sounds silky and I'd ask her again and as pp say, ay before you speak to hr or the governance officer. If it's innocent she'll tell you.

Yes not telling someone your age/ birthday is really strange.

I’d say it’s more likely she’s found out the information from your current job not her counselling job.

The NHS Spine has all DOBs on it

See, I'm leading a one-woman campaign to revive lots of lovely old-fashioned vocabulary in a bid to encourage people to be a bit more adventurous with words. Toodle-oo!

🎵 Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you 🎵
Happy Birthday Dear OP,
Happy birthday to y....raising formal grievance what?

In answer to your last question, I do think it's weird. If I asked someone when their birthday was and they said they didn't want to say I'd think it really odd and I'd be a bit weary of you.

Most people are happy to have 'work friends', just someone to have a quick chat to while the kettle is boiling on a break or something. Doesn't mean you have to start going on holidays together or anything. Birthdays are just polite chit chat, like the weather.

I guess your colleague has done some in depth googling and found the answer. She'd be a complete idiot to risk her job by misusing her nhs login. Sounds like she probably wouldn't have the right access rights anyway.

Or, bearing in mind that the OP doesn't seem to get on with most people including the manager, she may let the OP hang herself and seal her fate. This person doesn't work for the NHS so it is highly unlikely that she accessed the information via NHS systems; and there is currently no evidence at all that there is a GDPR breach of any kind, anywhere.

So the OP makes an unevidenced unsupported serious allegation (serious enough to get someone sacked) and then the other person is investigated. Her response is "FFS I just wanted to be nice and give her a birthday card and hoped it'd help her to get on witha few people, she seems lonely and quiet, just wanted her to feel part of the team, and her mate Bianca / cousin Sally (insert someone other reasonable explanation) that she used to work with remembered her DOB and told me..."

OP is now accused of bullying and lying, and facing her own investigation whilst her team mates are furious that their mate has been put through this....

The OP needs to be very very careful that she does not make a bad mistake over a birthday card.

Finding out information about people is much easier than anyone thinks. My friend, now married to the guy, when OLD had me as her "backup and personal investigator". She told her now husband that I check out her dates to make sure they are above board. He told her "good luck with that as he has no social media or online presence". She told me. 20 minutes later I texted her to ask him how he enjoyed living in Japan, told her where he was born, and his best mates name. I literally got that in 20 minutes on google - no access to personal data required. People leave lots of information "lying around" even when they think they haven't.

Being perturbed about someone not wanting to share their birthday is even weirder

my birthdate is part of security information on many of the websites I use.

Aren't people generally advised against using DOB as part of any security info?

Not if it's one of several gateways. Several sites I use also ask for it.

But the date and year is what the colleague asked for.

I agree with the posters who think it’s all the cloak-and-dagger stuff about OP not revealing her birthday is a bit high octane drama. The fact she refers to an adult colleague as a “young girl” makes me think OP is sensitive about her age.

But there are ways to find out a person’s DoB without breaching GDPR - though why anyone would want to go all that faff is beyond me.

How??

I mean that was the OP question right? She wondered how that colleague got those details (I’d also want to know why in earth she thinks it’s ok to push to want to offer a card etc…to someone who does p her best to NOT be involved in that sort of things) .

So if you think it’s that easy to get the info, it would be a great idea to explain how. Knowing her team doesn’t know btw….

I'm "weird" about my birthday because it happens to be the anniversary of my sister's death. I don't share the date with colleagues because I don't want some forced office jollification. I prefer to deal with the day in my own way and I don't see why I should have to explain any of this to all and sundry. If that makes me weird, so be it.

I wouldn't say it was weird for not wanting to disclose your birthday, but it is certainly unusual.

There's also nothing wrong with wanting to separate work and private lives, but some people seem a bit militant about that. I keep my work and private life relatively separate, but I've been where I work for a very long time so my work colleagues who have also worked there for a long time will have an idea of my general age and relationship status given I went off on maternity leave etc.

OPs colleague has clearly crossed a boundary by going out of her way to get information OP didn't want her to know. Whether this is worth bothering with depends on how the colleague has got this information.

I woudn't say you couldn't find me online but I think it would be difficult.

Have you read the thread? It’s already been explained by several posters.

Interesting. I don't think I have any online accounts which require my DOB as part of the security processes.

I had always been told that it was unwise to use such info, so tbh, I would have some concerns about any sites that relied on this info for security.

I don't need the extra waistline or bigger arse of constant birthday cakes and sugary laden slices and biscuits. My last job locations before retirement were on staffs of 38-55 people which means birthday events at work occur with amazing regularity.

When pressed for the date of my birthday, I say I don't give it and I choose to NOT celebrate it.

I take my own morning snack and lunch to work. I prefer to not have friends from my work.

In my last role before retirement, my line manager made it her business to discover my birthday ... so much so that I worked on past my 60th birthday for almost seven and a half weeks. She was "another one" of the four people who did not share her birthday at that workplace.

She telephoned me (out of the blue) about three months after retirement and said she knew my birthday. She revealed what she'd "discovered" and she was spot on ... she knew my birthday, the location of my birth and was within ten minutes of the time I was born.

She, moments later, revealed that she'd discovered the information by pestering her local suburban butcher, my brother-in-law.

She also revealed during the phone call that her own birthday was the same date ... [cue Twilight Zone theme] ... ACTUALLY the exact same day. Further her
birth-time was about 5-10 minutes after mine. We were pretty much identical ages.

She claimed she'd told no one else and said that my secret was safe. Her detective work was self-satisfying, it seems.

She'd really done nothing illegal but, all the same, I realised that in-depth privacy is a bit illusory. We usually have workmates and line-managers who just go along with us when we say we don't want to share "personal info".

sounds like she has snooped somewhere she shouldn’t but you also sound a bit odd OP