PRIVACY NEWS

The Federal German government has had to confront a severe setback concerning its plans for self-regulation of well-known social networks. The largest social networks such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Xing and Stayfriends are against signing up to the planned code, part of which includes self-regulation of data protection. The cited companies are not keen on the option of a establishing a national law, but are more in favor of a consistent international solution.

On April 30, 2013 the Berlin Regional Court decided to veto the use of a total of 8 data protection clauses in Apple’s privacy statement. Although not yet final, the judgment can be enforced in the interim.

Everyone is talking about the General Data Protection Regulation. It is a major topic for the business sector, the political sphere, and industry and professional associations. It is causing uncertainty among executive managers and making the day-to-day work of data protection and privacy officers at businesses more difficult. The seminar titled "The New EU General Data Protection Regulation. What Is Changing – and How Businesses Can Prepare" will bring clarity and structure to the debate. The seminar will be held by our Associate Partner Karsten Neumann. The cooperation partner and event organizer is the FFD forum for data privacy and protection.

On 24 April 2013, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Peter Schaar, presented his 24th activity report, this time for the years 2011 and 2012. In it he criticizes, among other things, the lack of rules and regulations for the deletion of personal data in companies and presents guidelines for a deletion policy.

Verizon presented a report on data breaches in 2013. The report contains the statistically processed experiences of 19 global organizations. This involved analyzing more than 47,000 security incidents and 621 confirmed data breaches that occurred in 2012 and that put at risk to a total of 44 million data sets. The report also contains information on what kinds of conclusions can be drawn from the results.

According to a representative study published on 15.04.2013 by the Federal Association of Information, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM), three quarters of all employees in Germany today are also available outside their regular working hours for coworkers, superiors and customers by cellphone or e-mail. Of these, 30 percent even have to respond on weekday evenings or weekend. The study “Working in the digital world” concluded that 87 percent of all employees work with computers and 67 percent with cellphones and that the trend toward mobile work is remorseless. Together with broadband networks and cloud services, the working world is changing in such a way that people can work or maintain contact with customers almost anywhere.

If an employer asks a job applicant a non-specific question concerning discontinued preliminary proceedings against the applicant, an incorrect answer to the question does not represent grounds for dismissal. The Federal Labor Court ruled that such a question breaches the right to informational self-determination.

In its judgment of 28.11.2012 – file number 9 U 77/12 – the Celle Higher Regional Court looked in detail at the extent to which an address broker is obligated to prove consent has been obtained and in what form this obligation can be regulated in general terms and conditions and the feasibility of applying a contractual penalty.

SEPA stands for Single Euro Payments Area and represents a standard process for cashless payment transactions that will come into effect on February 1, 2014. The SEPA process will replace national payment systems and lead to considerable changes to the financial processing systems used in companies. Many businesses are not prepared for this conversion; hence data protection officers and corporate executives would be well advised to obtain information on the extent of necessary technical and organizational measures for monitoring the protection of customer and supplier data and avoiding the organizational insolvency of their companies in 2014. For instance, the company archive is set to receive additional paper documents in the future, the Human Resources department will have to enquire about the IBAN/BIC data of employees, customers will have to be contacted and the SEPA data will have to be assigned correctly. To some extent, it may be possible to determine the SEPA data by means of appropriate software solutions.

If you have used Google’s search engine within the European Union, you may have noticed a change on its homepage last week – Google has adjusted its website. From now on, users will be asked for their consent for cookies to be installed.