Every day we leave behind a lot of data. Our life is monitored by hundreds of satellites, security cameras and our movements are tracked when you use your bank-, fitness club- or public transportation card and is saved and processed. Every movement we make online is business for someone.
Consumers and employees alike favour when they are known but dislike when they are followed or monitored.
Every time a salesperson contacts you via e-mail or phone, you should ask yourself; who gave them your information?
It is imperative for businesses to understand where to draw the line between adapting to users and spying on users, between collecting and processing data in conformity with the law and going beyond it.
The use of cookies and collection and processing of big data has created an opportunity for companies to find the most appealing client segment, to create personalised offers and to adapt to clients’ needs. Use of online resources has become one of the biggest advantages and also one of the biggest risks for companies.
Most of the largest data breaches and therefore the highest penalties to companies in relation to data breach arise from circumstances where office equipment has been given to an employee who then has had it stolen, lost, left unencrypted or has deliberately violated data protection rules with the intention to sell the data. Incidents also arise from negligence in regard to information security such as when an employee can access work related data with their own device which does not have an antivirus program or is not encrypted.
However, following data protection rules is not an issue only in these cases. A hot topic lately - reading employee’s e-mails –has raised a well-founded question whether the employer has a right to do it and where to draw the line when processing your employees’ data. Knowledge, whether the data is being processed in the right manner and lawfully, is important not only to the person, whose data is being processed, because unlawful data processing bring along several sanctions.
Today, on 28 January 47 European countries, United States of America and Canada celebrate the International Data Protection day. This day represents the day, when convention for the protection of individuals with regard to automatic processing of personal data was signed.
Personal information is any information that can be used to identify a person. Some of this data can also be categorized as delicate personal information which requires more protection. The aim of data protection is to assure that every person’s fundamental rights, liberties and privacy would be protected when processing such data.
NJORD Law Firm will carry out a series of seminars where different data protection issues and important aspects will be discussed.
The seminars will contain issues that entail practical and acute problems in data protection as well as issues where this problem may not seem so eminent.
The seminars will be carried out in both English and Estonian
