Home > Research Legal Advice > Employment / Labor > How to have your info removed from a potential employer's system? Privacy?
Asked 8 months ago - San Francisco, CA
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I met a company at a career fair and gave them a hard copy. They went and created a profile of mine in their system and sent me the password. I never logged in with the password.
I was disappointed with their i/v process. So I asked them to delete me from their system and to those they shared it with.
They tell me that they are required by US law to maintain this information for a period of two years! I never worked there. Just had one phone call and they stopped responding to me. I have reasons to suspect them and I want my info removed fully.
What are my right? Who are the agencies that I can take it up with?
I'm sorry to tell you that you cannot force this company to remove all references to you from its internal system. To the extent you had any right to privacy in the information you provided, you would have waived it with respect to this employer when you voluntarily gave the company information. The company does not have a right to provide any legally confidential information (medical info, Social Security Number) to another party without your consent. You may have signed a consent form or it may have been in an application.
An employer can be sued successfully for failing to hire a job applicant if that failure was based on a protected category, such as race, sex, age, disability, etc. For this reason, many employers regularly retain information on applicants, especially those whom they have interviewed.
I get the feeling there is something significant you haven't mentioned. If so, you may wish to speak privately with an attorney about it. To find a plaintiffs employment attorney in California, please go to the web site of the California Employment Lawyers Association (CELA). CELA is the largest and most influential bar association in the state for attorneys who represent working people. The web site is www.cela.org, and you can search for attorneys by location and practice area.
I hope you can resolve your situation and wish you the best.
If you give someone money, you may be able to use the legal system to get it back. When you give out information, it is gone for good. You may be able to use the legal system to constrain its uses, if you can prove statutorily prohibited use, but you cannot get information back.
Check you admission ticket and program materials (schedule, brochure, promo materials) for the career fair. Very likely somewhere in the fair materials, there is a warning, disclaimer, or other statement of the rights and purposes of the participating businesses. It will be in type about a quarter the size of the rest. It does not matter whether you signed it. Your entrance to the fair and participation can be understood as explicit agreement to the use of any info provided by you to fair participants, and the reasonably foreseeable uses of applicant info by the fair participants very likely constitutes implicit agreement.
By all means talk with an attorney if you need a more specific and detailed analysis.
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