UWV has unauthorizedly collected data from people on unemployment benefits. For example, the benefits agency wanted to find out whether they were illegally abroad.
“We have acquired and processed IP addresses in a certain way,” a spokesperson confirmed after reporting by NOS. “Legally this is not allowed. When we found out, we took legal advice about this and we stopped doing this,” said the spokesman. The reason for the unauthorized working method was a large-scale fraud with unemployment benefits in 2019.
Surveillance and enforcement
“The UWV has an enforcement and supervisory task to check whether rights and obligations are fulfilled. If you receive unemployment benefits, you must be present in the Netherlands, you must be available for the Dutch labor market,” says the spokesperson.
According to him, the stopped system has been active for nine months. The UWV says it has several systems to detect fraudsters. “We have different ways of checking abuse with benefits. We have now discontinued one of them.”