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Finnish bank eavesdropped on customer discussions [UPDATED]

February 14th, 2006 by , Filed under: Commentary, Privacy

A very rare eavesdropping case related to Sampo bank was reported in Finland today. This news was covered very widely in the local media.

Here is a summary of what happened to our knowledge:

Seven out of 30 offices in the capital district of Finland, recorded customer conversations at the tellers’ desks. No permission was given from the customers and they were never informed of this activity.

According to reports, the confidential discussions were being recorded in the Finland’s biggest cities, Helsinki and Espoo. Additionally, these discussions were mainly related to loan negotiations.

“The bank group recorded discussions for training purposes”, said Mr. Vuola, head of communications for the bank.
Later on Tuesday Sampo announced about upcoming changes in their policy to notifying customers. However, after a statement from The Data Protection Ombudsman, the bank decided to give up the practice.

You can find the original Turun Sanomat article here [Finnish-language].

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  • http://www.whiteacid.org WhiteAcid

    When you call a place and an automated voice tells you that the call may be recorder for statistical or training purposes does that make you act any differently during the call?
    That being said I can see why lawers and the media would want to expose this, easy money/publicity.
    As a sidenote the finnish language has to be one of the strangest ever, besides welsh. I’ve lived in Finnland for 10 years and I still can’t do anything in finnish, in my defence I didn’t need finnish on the coast where I lived.

  • http://networksecurity.typepad.com/ Juha-Matti

    The main difference in Sampo case was the location; customer conversations were being recorded at office hall. It was possible to use several signs, stickers etc. but there was no information for customers available.
    Yes, our declension system is more than strange ;-)

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