Wendy’s Restaurants Collecting Employees’ Fingerprints Scans
| Wendy’s Restaurants Collecting Employees’ Fingerprints Scans | |
|---|---|
| Short Title | |
| Location | Illinois |
| Date | October 2019 |
| Taxonomy | Surveillance, Disclosure |
| Information | Identifying |
| Threat Actors | All Star Management Inc. |
| Individuals | |
| Affected | Employees of Wendy's restaurants in Illinois |
| High Risk Groups | |
| Secondary Consequences | |
Wendy's was alleged to have collected, used, stored and potentially disclosed employees' fingerprints without individuals explicit consent.
Description
In October 2019 employees of Wendy's fast food restaurant franchisee in Illinois claimed, that the company collected, used, stored and potentially disclosed employees' fingerprints without properly informing the individuals and without getting their consent. Company required the employees to have their fingerprint scanned to enroll them in its employee database(s). This can be seen as an example of Surveillance: the biometric information of individuals was collected without proper informing them about the collection, its purposes as well as the length of processing and storage. The employees also mentioned Disclosure in the suit: the company failed inform the employees that their biometric information is disclosed at least one (unknown) third party, which hosted the data in their data centers. The franchisee faced a class action for violating Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA)
Risk Statistics
Laws and Regulations
(740_ILCS_§_14/)._Biometric_Information_Privacy_Act.
Sources
https://themarkup.org/ask-the-markup/2020/03/17/fingerprint-timeclock-biometrics-work
https://www.classaction.org/news/illinois-wendys-operator-hit-with-bipa-class-action-over-employee-fingerprint-scans