Mr. Jonsson from this post has told DV of how Kaupthing/Arion monitored their accounts once they were behind on payments on their mortgage.
Well duh, spying on customers’ personal matters is commonplace and very easy? If a single girl who works at a branch at an Icelandic bank meets a handsome guy downtown during the weekend, one of her first tasks on Monday will be to check on his financial status. And discuss it with her workmates.
So beware guys and girls too, because the male employers will look up your photo in the bank’s systems to show their colleagues. So update your photo regularly and visit a photographer instead of a photo booth if you want to score with a banker. And better pray your balance is in order.
One friend called her Kaupthing branch to ask about her balance. The customer service rep asked her, “oh I see you’ve been to Shalimar(restaurant). What is it like? I’ve been wanting to check it out”. The son of a Landsbanki employee got used to his mother’s helpful advise on how he should have spent his money otherwise after a while.
Bankers who have been renting out their own homes have checked on prospective tenants. And people might check on their uncle who just got a new car. And celebrities beware, according to employees of one of Landsbankinn’s branches, David Oddson is reasonably well off. Others have been used as examples of bad credit scorers within bank meetings.
If you think this is bad, imagine how incredible it is that more information doesn’t leak into the public’s domain. There must be some trust left in Iceland.
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icelandbob
2 years ago
Just to check…
Is there ANY form of data protection legislation in Iceland, or is it basically that all our details are available to anyone who fancies seeing?
Dadi
2 years ago
Data security is quite lax, the kennitala (social security #) contains your date of birth and is used for everything from purchasing pharmaceuticals to rent a DVD to appointments at doctors and banking. CRM systems at most companies use the kennitala to track the customer’s behavior.
The scary part though is the sharing that banks and financial institutions do through CreditInfo Iceland which is a private company where companies can share customer info, if the customer is delinquent or late in payments. This can affect their status all over the system. This is beneficial for a bank who can quickly find out if the person seeking a loan has a bad credit score. But a dispute over a bill or payments can easily land individuals on the blacklist and severely impact their negotiating position as they’d rather agree to what the company offers than to negotiate fairly but end up on the list.
icelandbob
2 years ago
That will explain why i went to a branch of a well known computer store when buying a mouse & USB. He asked for my Kennitala and then spouted off a sh1tload of data about me, where i lived, what i bought etc that i never expected a cashier to have!
when asked how he knew all this he simply stated “oh it´s all on your Kennitala” Cue a slight shudder and small loosening of bowels…
Blubber
2 years ago
And this is why some of us, who don’t have the nerves of steel like people who have public blogs (Dadi et al), comment anonymously.
Sebastian
2 years ago
One question, maybe banking system is monitoring any log in into account from service computers, so you can easily track bank workers checking balance on your account. To hide shopping preferences maybe the best choice is to use banknotes in order have more privacy… real big brother