kale73

By it’s own admission, the Privacy Policy “is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules”.

LarryJ

I can assure you that the ethics training that all of us undergo is very clear that we can not share passenger information, even with other employees, without going through proper approval channels.

dmurphynj

Give how IBM licenses mainframe software, I wouldn't be shocked if they tracked record accesses.... if for no other reason than to figure out who's consuming CICS transactions!

Often1

That is meaningless language put in place to minimize liability. It might be slightly helpful to UA in a lawsuit seeking money damages -- stress "might" -- but not for the employee who violates it.

nevansm

That's great, but I think SHARES runs on HPUX :-D

lincolnjkc

And I think the vast, vast majority of time employees are, if anything, overly cautious about it. Every time a UA employee has taken a selfie with me (for Twitter or other purposes) I've been asked at least 3 times if it's OK to take the picture, if its OK to post the picture, if I'm sure it's OK to post the picture etc. Next time it happens I wouldn't be at all surprised if they pull out a waiver/release.

When I've called to fix my wife's reservations (we kept our respective surnames...aside from the "what's the point" factor we figured with all the trouble I've had with a hyphenated last name from birth doing a double hyphenation would just be inviting problems) you can tell the agent's hesitancy goes up just as does the number of verification questions I'm asked.

But for 100 great employees there's bound to be one that doesn't realize the potential sensitivity of a traveler's travel plans (ignore the true VIP/celeb/public figure but imagine an exec negotiating a sensitive business transaction, or someone with a crazy ex/stalker, or...)

MSPeconomist

Someone traveling to interview for a new job could be extremely sensitive information for the individuals and companies involved.

Often1

There are all kinds of reasons why a person might not want their data disclosed. It is not for UA to determine whether those are good or bad reasons.

In fact, there are many people who simply do not want their data disclosed because they value their privacy even though nobody really cares. That is their prerogative and UA has agreed to honor that prerogative.

kale73

Yes. That’s obvious. Thanks for pointing it out, though.

txaggiemiles

its very obviously spelled out in the story what was disclosed.

txaggiemiles

If an agent or agents leaked to a third party like a family member or friend, or even to another employee of United, then that agent or agents should be fired.

JimInOhio

Discipline of some sort? Yes, but firing is going too far, especially if the employee has no history of private information sharing.

HNLbasedFlyer

Except it isn't - his name started to appear on a publicly available upgrade list. As soon as Cruz changed his flight - anyone could see he was on that flight - no source at United needed to tell anyone that - quite frankly, the travel blogger, in my opinion - is just puffing himself up by saying he had a UA source when he probably just saw it on the upgrade list.

JimInOhio

Isn't it a little tough to conclude who a passenger is from the upgrade list? Very few showing as SMI/J are actually Jeff Smisek.

HkCaGu

Exactly. As soon as it became known Wednesday night that he flew IAH-CUN, people like us could've been monitoring every CUN-IAH flight's upgrade list far into the future (remember the mobile app can be fooled by a changed clock).

If CRU, R was a smart UA Premier flyer, he could (1) buy F/J, (2) fly through ORD or other UA hubs where people aren't monitoring, (3) just fly another airline. Or he should've just vacationed in Hawaii (no CPU on IAH-HNL). But he just changed his flight, and because it took time to get through COVID testing, gave enough time for cameras to be readied at CUN, and of course IAH.