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Can bank tellers legally access my account information?
I recently had lunch with a friend of mine who happens to be a bank teller. She informed me that part of her job was to create "Customer Profiles". Upon enquiring what that was, she told me that they would look through a customers account and look for transactions such as homeowner's insurance payments. Then the bank would target those individuals and try to sell them their own homeowner's insurance.
The problem I have with this is that it's the individual bank employees sifting through the accounts, not some cryptic algorithmic bot. So is this even legal for a bank to give tellers access to their customer's accounts like this?
Obviously they can use my information for marketing strategies, but I'm not really talking about that. I'm talking about a teller, who makes $9 an hour, having access to and knowledge of every single transaction that I make. I trust the average bank teller about as much as I trust a McDonald's burger flipper.
And I live in the United States (Mississippi to be exact).
Once again. I'm not talking about a branch manager or someone in customer relations. I'm talking about a teller. Do you guys not see the difference here?
Once again. I'm not talking about a branch manager or someone in customer relations. I'm talking about a teller. Do you guys not see the difference here?
3 Answers
- u_bin_calledLv 78 years ago
Certainly... a good friend of mine worked for the customer relations department of a luxury automaker (hint..the company is based in Germany). His job was to create demographic profiles based on the registration and survey data provided. He was able to look through everything...names, addresses, phone numbers, etc.
He never named names..but he joked that he had more Hollywood starlets' phone numbers than George Clooney.. He told me how he had seen the personal information of some of the top US athletes and even several recording stars...
Perfectly legal for his company to have and for him to access in the course of his job...and that's where proper employee screening and training enter the picture. Misuse of that information could land the company in serious legal problems.
EDIT. Did you not see the part about "proper employee screening & training" in my answer? You make it sound like "teller" is a lowly function. Tellers are authorized to handle large sums of money on a daily basis. Do you not think that access to private information is any different?
- Jill SLv 48 years ago
Of course they can utilize their business data to make marketing decisions.
Can a banker just browse idly over lunch for no reason other than to snoop? Not if they don't want to be fired.
- Anonymous8 years ago
Depends on which country you are in. Some countries have very strict privacy laws that prohibit this. Others have no laws that restrict this type of intrusion.
