There is NO sensitive information on a payslip!

Tom

Church tax deduction is a bit a grey zone but apart from that indeed no personal sensitive information.

I used the wrong terminology (it's early), salary information is not considered 'sensitive personal information' under GDPR definitions (if you want to be anal about it). However it is personal information and it is confidential and it is considered sensitive to most people and HR would not give out that information to 3rd parties without any legal or regulatory obligation to do so.

Perhaps the real question is:


'I have, or intend to, alter my payslip to improve my chances of getting an apartment. What are the chances of getting caught?'

Obviously that depends on your definition of sensitive, but depending on context it clearly does.

For example it will have some or all of these:

- home address
- place of employment
- number of dependent children (via child allowance payments)
- probably employee number etc which may be a security risk
- employment percentage
- pension payments choice (if your employer has options)
- age bracket (via pension contribution amount and sickness insurance amount)
- rank/level at job based on payment percentages and extra payments

I would have no problem showing those to a prospective landlord (under the usual and legal confidentiality expectations), but wouldn't want them on EF for example.

Because I’m the signatory for employment documents for an employer with a fairly large Swiss presence, my scribble and contact info is on a couple of hundred ‘attestations’ that are requested by employees, a month.

A couple of times a month, I’ll get a call, or email from a third party asking me to confirm the details, or the authenticity of the attestation.

I confirm nothing, until I’ve alerted the employee that I’ve received the request and the employee confirms it is legitimate and gives me their green light to respond.

What I’m trying to say is that in my view, confirming personal info could be reasonable and lawful with the consent of the individual.

Payslips also indicate receipt of accident, maternity, illness indemnities, or debt repayments where the employer is ordered by office de poursuite (in Geneva) to deduct the money from the employee salary, on their behalf.

Some employer payslips also include the IBAN number of where the salary payment has been remitted.

The presence, or absence of tax at source deductions, also indicates immigration status.

Payslips can tell quite a story.

Thanks for the HR viewpoint HAIO. However, I already said in my first post of the thread that if an employee chooses to volunteer the information then it is generally fine. The negative context of HR volunteering any personal or confidential information to a 3rd party without the consent of the employee should therefore have been, I think, fairly implicit.

I've been asked to verify employee's salary details by rental agencies on more than one occasion...

Ok and as HAIO indicated did you verify that request with the employee first?

I have always requested a letter from HR to state my annual salary, start of employment and that I am employed permanently. That has always been sufficient. In requesting this, I have also told them I am applying for flats and that if an agency would call, they should please confirm the data on the letter they provided.

Confirm is key here as HR can say yes or no to info you have already provided with your consent but will not divulge about your employment status, salary etc. to any Tom or Harry calling.

HR should also not confirm anything without your consent to anyone that is not a trusted partner with the proper agreements i plance t handle such data, because bad actors could be calling and fishing for information by guessing/sourcing details and looking to have them confirmed. Due diligence should be done and the proper checks made before divulging any personal or confidential information to 3rd parties.

Thank you. You're the only one here that actually answered my question fully.

The reason I posted is that I was thinking that having blackouts on my payslip to hide personal info can be misconstrued as violating the authenticity of the payslip, just like someone who edits the numbers on the payslip, resulting in the landlord having to call my employer to verify the information

That was not my question.

Maybe I have to rephrase it for you:

Would blackout edits on my payslip constitute as illegally altering my payslip, just like if someone alter the numbers on the salary?

Unless you are using the blacking out to intentionally mislead the agency (eg: hide relevant data to the application decision), then blacking out confidential data on your payslip is not similar to artificially altering a legitimate salary figure into a new and falsified figure on your payslip. By blacking out the data you are restricting what the landlord can see, but if those details are not relevant to what they requested then I don't think there would be an issue. If they insist that they need to see the data then I assume that they will tell you and then you can decide what you want to do next.

Not for me, but for the entire group, as this is a very different question to the title of the thread. As the payslip is yours, legally you can do anything you want to it, however, the legality issues arise when you want to use that for some kind of transaction.


What exactly do you want to redact?

Oh shit. I can't believe I missed Friday again.

It was a holiday, at least here.

Tom

give yourself Monday off and write on the bathroom mirror and coffee coup " it's Friday !" - so you get it back

ps. be careful as that be like "Friday out" - next day you remember be Monday ?

Verifying authenticity of a document, especially one already provided to them by said employee, is not the same as revealing personal information. It's possible also that apartment application's form might have some wordage expressing consent to such verification checks, then the agency could forward it as a proof of consent.


And your company's policies insisting on an employee's ack even for these cases, don't apply to other companies.