Login
Privacy Act protecting job applicants stealing credentials
A cyber lawyer has called for Australian universities to urgently change policies around confirming someone’s attendance and the degree they claim to have.
Naomi Neilson
Currently, universities are citing the Privacy Act for why they cannot verify a degree or confirm if the person attended the university. This has opened up workplaces to hiring unqualified staff who have lied to them about the degrees they hold.
To continue reading the rest of this article, please log in.
Create free account to get unlimited news articles and more!
Brisbane intellectual property and cyber lawyer Nicole Murdoch said: “In the majority of due diligence cases conducted for clients there are issues with false credentials and I know of many cases that are not yet public but may well be public eventually.”
“It’s a much bigger problem than people may realise.”
Ms Murdoch said the majority of cases are not sinister and most people have just failed to update their profile to indicate that a course was uncompleted. However, she noted there are plenty of examples of people stealing credentials to secure a position.
Recently in Australia, Andrew Flanagan received a $400,000 package to work at Myer as general manager for strategic business development. He cited an “impressive” CV, complete with health, retail and commerce experience, but it had all been faked.
In another case, a senior executive officer of a significant Australian organisation was found to have lied about his credentials and his supposed qualifications.
Ms Murdoch said the internet is complete with websites and links to sites where people can create or obtain a fake university diploma. HR departments are increasingly trying to field applications from people whose credentials seem perfect, but are not verified.
“HR departments can’t afford to take at face value the claimed credentials of applicants for high-level positions,” Ms Murdoch said. “As we have seen with publicly outed and, as yet unnamed examples, faking qualifications is quite an issue.”
Ms Murdoch said people should know that once information becomes public, they are effectively “stealing credentials” and it is almost impossible to remove things from the internet. Stealing credentials will “blight them through their working life”.
She added there is an acceptance the Privacy Act can be invoked to protect people’s personal information, but increasingly it’s being used falsely by job applicants.
“If you claim to have university qualifications your potential employer should have the right to verify that claim. Otherwise people can and do claim all manner of qualifications and could cause mayhem within the organisation employing them.”
