The company collects public data into a database. Can I use that data for "personal" purposes?

Question

My company periodically collects prices of hundreds of items (grocery items and the like) from various outlets into a database for market research and other company-relevant business. This collection is done by 3-4 employees whose full-time job is to drive around all day to shopping outlets and supermarkets and record the prices. We don't get any data electronically from any outlet, everything is collected manually through "public" channels.

I have access to the production database through my job.

I'd like to use that data for a simple yet admittedly selfish purpose. I want to find the cheapest prices before I go shopping. I can easily find out when a supermarket has a special offer on Nutella, for example.

Is it professional/ethical to do this? On one hand, the prices themselves are definitely public and anyone can find them by walking into the outlets. On the other hand, the aggregate data takes a lot of effort to collect and is therefore valuable.

Answer 1

I'd like to use that data for a simple yet admittedly selfish purpose. I want to find the cheapest prices before I go shopping.

Is it professional/ethical to do this? On one hand, the prices themselves are definitely public and anyone can find them by walking into the outlets. On the other hand, the aggregate data takes a lot of effort to collect and is therefore valuable.

In my opinion, it's neither professional nor ethical to use information gathered and paid for by the company for your personal use, unless you first have their permission.

Databases and their contents should be considered company property. Just because you are in a position technically to have access to the contents doesn't mean you are free to use it for non-company uses. And the nature of the contents and how the contents were acquired doesn't change that fact. You generally don't have permission to use company property unless it is granted to you.

If the company publishes the information on a publicly-available website, then that implies permission (at least for using the data through the website). On the other hand, if the company sells that information, then that implies that you don't have permission.

If the company tells employees (either in written or verbal form), that they can use the data, then you have permission.

Otherwise, the best way to know for sure is to ask for permission. Talk to your boss first, and if she/he doesn't know, you could ask who could give you permission.

Something like "Hey, boss. The prices in the XYZ database - they would be handy for personal use. Is that something the company would permit?" is a reasonable question. It's also possible that this simple question would result in an answer like "Sure. Many of the employees use it that way." But you will only know by asking.

If I were the manager, I wouldn't think less of someone for asking such a question, even if the answer were "No. That isn't permitted."

I'd think far less of someone who just decided to help themselves to the data without asking first. I'd wonder what else they were helping themselves to without permission.

Answer 2

I would adopt a loose attitude here and say go ahead. All you're doing is using the data to do your shopping.

As long as you're not

a) Wasting company time (i.e. spending time you're supposed to be working compiling your shopping lists)

b) Doing anything that would harm the company or its reputation (e.g. giving the data to a competitor, making it publicly available, or using it for a competing business yourself)

c) accessing data which you are not supposed to be authorised to access

..then you're not really doing anything unethical. People use information they learned at work in their personal lives all the time. I wouldn't even bother asking your boss...

EDIT

Just to be absolutely clear, based on comments, I am speaking only about the case proposed by the OP, checking the publicly available prices of products in their local supermarket, and not saying it's OK to use your access to other data (e.g. HR personnel records, company accounting data or anything else that might be personal or confidential even if not explicitly specified as private)

Answer 3

Generally speaking, access to your company’s data is probably limited. The company’s data, although gathered from public sources, is not public itself. It belongs to your company, and accessing it for anything but your work is illegal.

In your specific situation, why don’t you ask your boss whether he’d allow you to check the quality of production data, mostly on your own time? That way, you both benefit: your company gets confirmation that their data is factually correct, and you can buy cheap groceries. Accessing the data with your boss’s consent is perfectly fine.

Answer 4

If your company follows best practices regarding data security, then you should have signed a Data Use Agreement (DUA), Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA), or similar when you were granted permission to access the data (as part of your job). It most likely would involve taking an online 'course' in data security and/or privacy.

In that agreement, as well as the 'course', you would have been told what uses were permissible, as well as how to obtain permission for uses that are outside of the normal permissible uses. Most likely, severe consequences exist if you're caught using it for impermissible uses - even apparently harmless ones. In some cases that even includes possible jail time (though likely not in your case, but who knows).

As an example, I work for a not-for-profit which performs survey research for the government. We collect quite a bit of data, much of which is private. We're not permitted to use that data for any purpose outside of our normal work activities without permission. However, there is an explicit process we can follow if, for example, we wanted to use some of the data to publish a paper on our research. As it involves the government, of course they have to have sign-off, but it's a very standardized process and explicitly mentioned in our data use agreement. On the other hand, if I were to look at the dataset I'm working with and see if my grandmother was in it, I would be potentially facing jail time - just for looking.

If you don't have an agreement of any sort (NDA/DUA/etc.), then you should talk to your company's Information Security Officer (ISO), or if that doesn't exist, your manager. Never use information for any non-work purpose without doing so - even without an agreement. You could be breaking agreements your company has with other partners in doing so. For example, your company may have agreements with the grocery stores to allow it to collect that information; using it to get better deals on your groceries could potentially harm the stores and violate the agreements, causing the stores to issue a trespass order against your company's employees (while they're "public" places, they do have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason other than discrimination against protected classes).

Answer 5

Trivial example of why the answer can't be an unqualified "go ahead": the guys who were running a dating site until it was discovered that they were actively mining the data for girls whom they could invite on dates, whether their system thought it was a good match or not. Arguably legal, but most of their customers considered it unethical/creepy, and that news destroyed the service. The fact that data is public does not mean all uses of it are a good idea.

Answer 6

I can imagine using your company data for this purpose is tempting, but there might actually be a better solution for this that doesn't involve using the hard work your company has put into this.

There are plenty of sites that already have done this kind of work and are willing to provide this information either for free or for a small monthly fee. Depending on where you live, it is entirely possible that you can access this information without relying on the work your company has done.

https://www.shopify.com/blog/7068398-10-best-comparison-shopping-engines-to-increase-ecommerce-sales has a list of 10 popular comparison shopping engines. Aside from that, many countries have a local version just for their specific country. I do not know what country you're from, but it's likely that you can already access such data freely through non-company mediums.

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If you are unable to find sites like that, the comment from Colin Young about turning it into a company product might be of interest for you. Indeed, such a site can be of commercial value, because there are plenty of people out there that would love to be able to save on their shopping bills just by visiting other stores.