German Court Rules That IP Addresses Are Not Personal Info
from the it's-just-business dept
There's been an ongoing discussion in Europe as to whether or not IP addresses should be considered personal info. The implications have a lot to do with how companies deal with your IP address. If it is considered private info, then they are quite limited in what they can do with it. If it's not, then it opens up ISPs to being required to store your IP addresses in log files that they may be required to keep. As we noted when this debate first heated up, the entire argument is a little misleading, as it sets up a false scenario. Lots of your info is private in some scenarios and public in others. You give out your name freely in some cases, but in others might not want it known. Your IP address is, by default, "public" in that you have to display it to computers you connect to in order to do anything online.A German court has now ruled that IP addresses should not be considered personal info, and thus can be stored without problem by ISPs. In this case, an individual had sued, claiming that sites that kept log files were violating his privacy, but that would be like saying a store that videotaped you entering their premises violated your privacy. Putting yourself out in public means you're out in public, even if it's online. In this case, it sounds like the court got it right.
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Filed Under: germany, ip address, personal info, private info
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legal terms of service
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"Without additional information, IP addresses do not count as personal data"
Once you are able to link the IP address to something that identifies you personally like a user name or the email address entered above then it becomes a common key that could possibly be used to mine all sorts of private information.
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For example - plenty of forums display IP addresses which can be linked to the poster's name or at least handle.
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comment
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Now, if he had been suing because they were using the logs for some sort of privacy violation, that might be different, and would bring up other problems. But the idea that you would sue because a computer remembered your name (As above, if you go to a store and tell them your name, you can't sue because they later remember your name) is ridiculous. I'm glad to see someone in the government of Germany is paying attention.
Now, if we could get the idiots in the US to do the same, we might be getting somewhere...
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