If IPs are protected information, so how is this handled in E-Mails, on mailing-lists like this and alike?
Have messages to be stripped off IPs before they are delivered? Who's legally responsible for protecting the data?
Just an example: Company X could scan all header information from SwiNOG-list. The intention would to check who is using which ISP. Now everybody who's IP comes from company B receives a personalized e-mail with an offer to get a hosting product X cheaper. As I wrote: Just an example.
Now there would clearly be a commercial intention behind processing the IPs. My understanding is, that this would be illegal for a Swiss company.
But if a company abroad would do this, would it still be illegal? If so, the company couldn't be held responsible. The question is: Would, as a subsidiarily liability, the maintainer of the list or even the provider of the IPs, the ISP, be responsible for not protecting the personal data accordingly?
Guido
Am Wed, 8 Sep 2010 16:16:52 +0200 schrieb Pascal Gloor pascal.gloor@spale.com:
I'm trying to make a list of all possible implications/problems that this ruling can make. Please send me a direct mail with your questions and I will forward them to a good lawyer (actually, the one involved in that case).
So far, questions/implications I've seen or came to me are:
Any statistics tool those results are public and contains IP addresses (webalizer for example).
This case if clear to me, no need to argue. You can't publish the IPs. Ensure that you set the correct option to avoid that part of the stats or maybe there's an anonymizer flag, or maybe, don't make them public.
Wikipedia, if hosted in Switzerland, cannot publish anymore the IP of anonymous editors.
This is also a very clear case, you link the IP with an activity and are therefor protected by the law.
Whatever Blacklists without consent of the admin of the IP..
That's an open question, these blacklists are often listing services IP (not personal computers with humans behind). I'm thinking about anti-spam blacklist, like that SwiNOG one!! I will clear that point with the lawyer.
Complete this list please, I want to be sure we can answer all questions at one. Maybe I'll setup a page to help people to understand the implications.
Pascal
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