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The Privacy Commissioner has criticised NZ Post for the way it handled an employee who bombarded a woman with text messages after copying her contact details from a parcel.
South Auckland woman Amy Connell, 22, began receiving the calls on Monday night after going to a Post Shop in Manukau City to send a parcel. She filled in a form asking for her name, address, home and mobile phone number.
The Post Shop worker who took the form copied her contact details after deciding she was "hot".
Ms Connell said she wanted the man fired for breaching his position of trust. She was also angry NZ Post was withholding his personal details - which she needed for a police complaint - for "privacy reasons".
Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff told Campbell Live last night NZ Post needed to look "really hard" at the case.
"I would encourage NZ Post to look really hard at this one and to say customer privacy is really important too. This information was collected only for the purposes of presumably tracking the courier bag and should not have been used for other purposes.
"NZ Post will have to make up their mind about that. They have the ability to disclose this information if they judge it to be appropriate."
She said a balance had to be struck between employee privacy and the privacy of customers.
"Well done to Amy for sticking to her guns and sticking up for her rights and persisting with it. Obviously something is going to happen now as a result."
She said Ms Connell could have contacted the privacy officer at NZ Post to complain or she could have contacted the Privacy Commission.
Large firms had to have privacy officers, she said.
She said the Privacy Act required all agencies, whether business or Government, to collect the information only for a certain purpose and then only to use it for that purpose, with certain exceptions.
"And one of the exceptions applies in this particular case because information can be disclosed if it's required to enforce the law."
NZ Post spokeswoman Fiona Mayo wouldn't comment on the issue last night, saying it was an employment matter with the worker. "We are going through the process of talking to him."
