Gdansk Primary School No. 2 meal payment verification

Occurred: March 2020

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Gdansk Primary School No. 2, in northern Poland, has been fined EUR 4,600 by UODO, the country's data privacy regulator, for processing students' fingerprint data to verify their school meal payments. 

The school had been using fingerprints to verify whether pupils had paid for their meals since 2015, with system being used on 680 children in the current academic year, while four children were processed using 'an alternative identification system'.

According to UODO, the system was unfair, and 'significantly disproportionate' to the task. 

In October 2021, several schools in North Ayrshire, Scotland, attracted the ire of the UK data privacy regulator for using facial recognition to verify school meal payments.

Operator: Gdansk Primary School No. 2
Developer: Unknown
Country: Poland
Sector: Education
Purpose: Verify meal payments
Technology: Fingerprint biometrics
Issue: Privacy; Appropriateness/need
Transparency: Governance

Page info
Type: Incident
Published: March 2020
Last updated: November 2021