An applicant for a professorship was rejected - not because he lacked the necessary qualifications, but because the university came across an old criminal warrant during a Google search. The candidate, an experienced labour lawyer, complained that the university had never informed him that it was searching for personal information online - a clear violation of the General Data Protection Regulation, according to his argument.
The Düsseldorf Regional Labour Court ruled in his favour: it was not the search itself that was the problem, but the silence about it. According to the GDPR, data subjects must be informed if data about them is collected from third-party sources. The man was awarded 1,000 euros in damages for the loss of control over his data - a highly symbolic judgement.
The university does not want to accept this and has lodged an appeal. The Federal Labour Court must now clarify how far public employers are allowed to go with online searches - and where the boundaries of data protection in the application process lie.
The case shows: Anyone researching online must act transparently. Secret googling can be expensive - not only financially, but also legally.
Source: https://www.onlinehaendler-news.de