With GDPR, can you request &#39;real life data&#39; be deleted/forgotten? For example, can you request libraries remove your name from books you have checked out?
I don't believe GDPR makes a distinction between 'real life' and 'online'. It's all real life. You can tell anyone that they don't have consent to keep your personal data, but that doesn't mean they always have to delete it. There are six lawful bases for processing of personal data, so if an organisation is using and can justify one other than consent then they don't necessarily have to delete your data when they ask. The six bases are listed by the UK Information Commissioner's Office: (a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose. (b) Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract you have with the individual, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract. (c) Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations). (d) Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life. (e) Public task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law. (f) Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests. (This cannot apply if you are a public authority processing data to perform your official tasks.) https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing/#ib3
Companies House itself is exempt from certain GDPR provisions, including Article 17, by virtue of the Data Protection Act 2018, Schedule 2, Part 1, paragraph 5. (That's the Act which implements the GDPR in UK law.) The listed GDPR provisions do not apply to personal data consisting of information that the controller is obliged by an enactment to make available to the public, to the extent that the application of those provisions would prevent the controller from complying with that obligation. The list is in paragraph 1 of that Part, and has effect under section 15 of the Act. Because the registrar is obliged by an enactment, the Companies Act 2006, to make information available to the public, it's exempt from being asked not to. When Companies House data is processed by somebody else, they do not have this exemption. They are the &quot;data controller&quot; with respect to what they've retrieved (from the API or by scraping) and have freestanding obligations under the GDPR. They may still have other reasons why they are able to retain and process your data, such as a vital interest or a legitimate interest in protecting themselves or others from fraud, and therefore wanting to maintain a list of people associated with insolvent companies. For Article 17 specifically, there are exceptions relating to the public interest, statistics and research which might be invoked. But random websites cannot claim exemption from Article 17 just because the data comes from Companies House. There is nothing in the Companies Act which says that third parties are obliged to mirror Companies House data. This is explained in greater detail in the Companies House Personal Information Charter, which is where I found the citation above. They go on to say: If you have any concerns about company data on third party products and websites, please contact the organisation directly. We’re not able to advise other organisations on UK GDPR compliance, and we cannot advise you on whether other organisations are complying with the law.
Your VPN scenario is why you have to show the banner to everyone. If you somehow knew beyond any doubt that someone was not in the EU, then you would not have to show a banner, but because you can't verify that, you should always show the banner. Doing so also protects against accidentally violating a similar law in another country; the GDPR is the best-known privacy law, but it is far from the only one. It's good practice to ask for people's permission before collecting their information anyway.
The GDPR applies to such sites if they offer services in the EU/EEA. If they clearly wanted to avoid being subject to the GDPR, they should block visitors from the EEA. For the GDPR, only location matters. Other concerns like residence or citizenship are generally irrelevant. Personal data does not turn non-personal just because it was public. So the GDPR still applies when the data was collected from public sources. However, the data controller (who determines the purpose of processing) often has to balance your rights and interests against other interests (e.g. when using legitimate interest as a legal basis for some processing). For the purpose of publicly displaying your data, only showing data that was already public anyway makes it easier to argue that this is fine. But when the GDPR applies, you have data subject rights. Relevant rights include: a right to access, to see all the data they have about you a right to rectification, to correct wrong data they hold about you a right to restriction, effectively an opt-out a right to erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten) These rights apply both against the website and against Google Search (arguably, both are doing the exact same thing). Google correctly points out that they can't remove information from the Web, but they can hide information from search results. If you feel that your requests have not been resolved correctly, you can issue a complaint with your country's data protection authority. In theory you can also sue them. In practice, GDPR enforcement against overseas data controllers can be quite difficult and has not yet happened.
No, a company cannot suspend your GDPR rights – contracts can't override the law. Your rights as a data subject apply as long as your personal data is being processed. However, there is no requirement in the GDPR that they fulfill your data subject rights through a self-service mechanism like a “download my data” button. They can require you to use another support channel. (But Google offers infamously bad support.) In some cases, the service may legitimately decide that they cannot give you access to the data, for example if they believe that you are not the actual data subject (e.g. if they think that you hacked the account). The right to access must not adversely affect other people (Art 15(4)). If they have doubts about your identity, they can require further information to verify you (Art 12(6)). If your requests are excessive or unfounded (if you are spamming them), they can also turn down the requests (Art 12(5)).
Is it GDPR compliant that I can't access the account that I created and the personal data that I shared because "I haven't completed their internal pre-qualification process"? Article 15 defines a “Right of access to the data subject” but it's difficult to see how this could be construed as a right to log into a specific website. Common sense suggests this would be a very bad idea. If they are willing to provide the data through another means (say a report or data dump of some sort), the obligation would seem to be met. In fact, article 15(3) even states that data controllers should merely provide the information in a “commonly used electronic form” (i.e. not necessarily through access to their systems or whatever form they are using internally for the processing). Have you asked for that and would you be satisfied by that resolution? Is it GDPR compliant that their answer to my deletion request is "We will delete the data..." The text of article 17 (right to erasure) explicitly specifies that such a request must be honored without “undue delay”. Article 12, which defines some of the modalities for the rights to access, rectification or erasure by the data subject, also provides that controllers shall “provide information on action taken on a request […] without undue delay and in any event within one month of receipt of the request”. You haven't provided any time frame and I don't think there is anything wrong with acknowledging the request by promising they “will” do it but in light of article 12, it seems you would indeed be entitled to know once they have actually taken further action. However, you implied you might want to access the data first and it's not clear to me whether you explicitly invoked the GDPR in earlier communications. So I would clarify and reiterate my request (access or erasure) and ask them for explicit confirmation once it has been satisfied.
Yes, this violates the GDPR if the user is in Europe. Data which is tied to a personal device can be tied to the person who owns it. From "What Is Personal Data" by the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) (emphasis added): Personal data is information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual. What identifies an individual could be as simple as a name or a number or could include other identifiers such as an IP address or a cookie identifier, or other factors. If it is possible to identify an individual directly from the information you are processing, then that information may be personal data. If you cannot directly identify an individual from that information, then you need to consider whether the individual is still identifiable. You should take into account the information you are processing together with all the means reasonably likely to be used by either you or any other person to identify that individual. The bit about "all means reasonably likely" in the last bullet includes the kind of de-anonymisation tactics described in the NYT article. There are 6 lawful bases for data processing in the GDPR, and all processing must fall under at least one of them. (a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose. (b) Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract you have with the individual, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract. (c) Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations). (d) Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life. (e) Public task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law. (f) Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party, unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests. (This cannot apply if you are a public authority processing data to perform your official tasks.) Selling data isn't covered by any of the others, so consent must be obtained. Permission must be clear and positive, and you cannot predicate delivery of a service on the processing of data that isn't necessary for that service. So for instance you cannot say "You can use this service as long as we are allowed to collect and sell your data" because selling the data isn't necessary to the provision of the service. From "Consent" by the ICO: Consent requires a positive opt-in. Don’t use pre-ticked boxes or any other method of default consent. Explicit consent requires a very clear and specific statement of consent. Keep your consent requests separate from other terms and conditions. Be specific and ‘granular’ so that you get separate consent for separate things. Vague or blanket consent is not enough. [...] Avoid making consent to processing a precondition of a service. This applies to any processing of data about individuals within the EU, so just being an American company doesn't get you a free pass to ignore the GDPR if your app gets used by Europeans. The "Legitimate interests" basis is more problematic, in that the company collecting the data has to conduct a vague "balancing test" to determine if this basis applies. For direct marketing the ICO has written this, which says that direct marketing may be a legitimate interest, especially if you can show that the user has expressed interest in such adverts. For instance a location service which promises to tell you about nearby special offers would fall into this category. Against this, the impact on the user's privacy has to be considered, and location data is "special category data" because it can reveal medical information (e.g. hospital attendance) or religious affiliation (e.g. which church you go to). So unless the relationship between the recorded location data and the service is very direct its not going to pass the balancing test. The company would also need to distinguish between knowing the current location and keeping a record of historical locations; the two need separate justification. And of course nothing about this covers the sale of the data; this is considering a company which sells advertising space in it's app, not one that sells the data itself.
When you make a request based on the GDPR, Art. 12(6) GDPR applies. Without prejudice to Article 11, where the controller has reasonable doubts concerning the identity of the natural person making the request referred to in Articles 15 to 21, the controller may request the provision of additional information necessary to confirm the identity of the data subject. As you can see, this only applies when the data controller (Blizzard) has reasonable doubts about your identity. If I understand it correctly, Blizzard provides services (games) which requires you to login with a username and password. So they have no doubts about your identity when you use their (paid) services with just a username and password. So there should also be no reasonable doubts when you make other requests when you are able to login to their website. A copy of your government ID seems unnecessary. Recital 57 also confirms that identification does not require a government ID: Identification should include the digital identification of a data subject, for example through authentication mechanism such as the same credentials, used by the data subject to log-in to the on-line service offered by the data controller. A copy of your id, includes a photograph. The photograph could show health, religious, racial or ethnic information. That kind of personal data has much stricter rules defined in Art.9 . Most governmental IDs contain a national identification number. EU Member States can limit processing of those identification numbers even further. For example in the Netherlands processing of the identification number is only allowed when a specific law exists. So Blizzard is not allowed to process a Dutch national identification number. There are also ID convers] which hide sensitive information like document numbers and photographs in case you do need a copy of an ID. Also note that identification is only possible by comparing existing personal data with the provided personal data. I assume you did not provide a copy of your ID when registering. So many things which are shown on the ID do not make sense to sent to Blizzard. It does not know your place of birth, so it cannot verify it. Art. 5 requires 'data minimisation' for personal data. So they are not allowed to process more data than required. So you also do not need to send you more data than required. You should get an answer on your request within 30 days. However, since you ask to delete your account, the answer also might be that they will deny your request. They have to explain why they will not delete your account.