Social Welfare staff looked up private data of celebrities, Lotto winner and a missing person, court told

by Storyboys

21 comments

  2. “Judge Michael Walsh heard that a manager in the Artane branch of the AIB used to ring the Kilbarrack office of the Department to check customer’s PPS numbers.”

    Good lord.

  4. About 20 years ago this happened to Ireland’s first mega euro millions winner, about 120m I think. Anyway there was a huge fuss at the time and thought some sort of protocol was put in place.

  5. I’ve memories of this being a thing too with Gardaí checking the pulse system on people they knew.

  7. Lol. This is nothing. Years back I knew a load of girls working banking cashier desks. If they were going on a date they’d check him out financially first 🤣😂🤣😂

  9. They may as well, they don’t do anything else of use in their job.

  11. Yeah – social welfare worker here. This is illegal, they shouldn’t be doing it, every time you access the database it *is* being logged, and if anyone catches you, you are *so* getting sacked xD

    Fr the rules on this are so strict that I’m not even allowed look up *my own* pps number. Much less that of a random lotto winner. Taking the piss like this is well out of bounds.

  12. The signs in the office: “If you forget your friend’s birthday, don’t look it up!”
    Which i thought was a fun way of reminding people not to be stupid with information.

  13. Everyone should note that this is the claim of someone who was caught looking up peoples personal information for a PI for pay, and who was fired for it, not the most trustworthy of sources, nor indicative of any “custom and practice”…

  15. ‘Sure it’s grand, it’s not like we work for a government agency with a decent technological infrastructure, it’s not like they’ll notice’

  17. Celebrities and a lotto winner don’t need social welfare

  18. I did my transition year work placement in a station and was able to access the PULSE system without supervision. Data protection wasn’t really a thing back then

  19. DSP clerks have openly admitted to me to looking up details of people with whom they have had no business with, other than being nosey.

  20. Love the legal system here.. the dopey cow admitted to a gdpr breach in fucking court and the defence is still like “oh well no one was hurt”

  21. Let me guess no one was held to account for this breach of trust

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