GATINEAU – The Privacy Commissioner has cracked down on a cable company for a Facebook post containing the names of customers with overdue accounts.
According to an incident summary published this week, the Privacy Commissioner’s Office was contacted last December about an unnamed cableco in the Northwest Territories that had posted online a list of its customers with overdue accounts and the amounts they owed. When contacted by the Office, the cable provider said it believed the practice to be permissible, citing as an example municipalities who publish the names of individuals in arrears for their property taxes.
The Privacy Commissioner disagreed, saying the need to collect a debt from an individual does not exempt an organization subject to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) from its obligation to first obtain the individual's consent to disclose their personal information.
“The cable provider then inquired about how paragraph 7(3)(b) of PIPEDA allows for the disclosure of an individual's personal information to collect a debt they owe”, reads the summary. “Our Office explained that, for example, this exemption to consent under PIPEDA allows for disclosing the debtor's personal information to a third-party debt collector who is acting as the agent of the organization owed.
“It does not, however, allow organizations to publicly disseminate information about their debtors without the debtors' knowledge or consent.”
