Q.  Can my Company institute a timekeeping system that uses fingerprints to track time?

A. Employers increasingly maintain timekeeping systems that require employees to clock in and out of work using their fingerprints to reduce the risk of coworkers clocking in for each other (so-called “buddy punching”) and to increase the accuracy of time reporting. Fingerprints are biometric data, and some employees fear that their data could be stolen or sold, leading to identity theft. The damage caused by identity theft is greater when biometric data is stolen because, unlike Social Security numbers or other personally identifiable information, an individual’s biometrics cannot be changed.

At present, there is no federal statute regulating employers’ use of employees’ biometric data, and just three states — Illinois, Texas and Washington — have laws that specifically regulate biometric privacy.¹

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