katrinagardener said:
Thank-you for posting even though you are in the UK! Your post only confirms how archaic the US is in employment law!!!
How did his post confirm that US employment law is archaic? What a novel idea that it is a bad idea to put your personal info on a computer not owned by you. But anyway here is the real deal.
To the OP. Because your "personal information" was contained within files left on your computer and not in an organized filing system held by your employer it probably falls outside the data protection act. Read this:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/cms/DocumentUploads/ICO_EmpPracCode.pdf
"What information is covered by the Code?
Information about individuals, that is kept by an organisation on computer
in the employment context, will fall within the scope of the Data Protection Act and therefore, within the scope of this Code.
However, information that is kept in simple manual files will often fall outside the Act. Where information falls outside the Act, this Code can do no more than offer advice on good information handling practice.
Personal information
The Code is concerned with ‘personal information’. That is, information which:
● is about a living person and affects that person’s privacy (whether in his/her personal or family life, business or professional capacity) in the sense that the information has the person as its focus or is otherwise biographical in nature, and
● identifies a person, whether by itself, or together with other information in the organisation’s possession or that is likely to come into its possession.
This means that automated and computerised personal information kept about workers by employers is covered by the Act. It also covers personal information put on paper or microfiche and held in any ‘relevant filing system’. In addition, information recorded with the intention that it will be put in a relevant filing system or held on computer is covered.
Only a well structured manual system will qualify as a relevant filing system. This means that the system must amount to more than a bundle of documents about each worker filed in date order. There must be some sort of system to guide a searcher to where specific information about a named worker can be found readily. This might take the form of topic dividers within individually named personnel files or name dividers within a file on a particular topic, such as ‘Training Applications’."