Transparency is important in order to ensure that data subjects understand how thier personal data is processed. It is one of the core data protection principles to process personal data in a fair, transparent and lawful manner, so this means that we must be sure that we have informed the data subject of how their data is processed. Included in our obligations, we must inform data subjects:
- the identity and contact details of the controller
- the contact details of the data protection officer
- the purposes of the processing and the lawful basis
- if we are processing personal data in our legitimate interest
- inform them of the parties personal data is shared with
- how long their data is retained and;
- any transfers of their personal data to a third country.
Under normal circumstance we will inform the data subject of all of this through a privacy notice, which we must provide to them at the point of which we are collecting their data. It is good practice to place a Privacy Notice on the organisations website and place a link to the privacy notice in email footers as this ensure that most of the individuals being communicated with will be able to read the notice. Care should be taken though not to rely 100% on this approach and consideration should be given to those individual who may not normally know that you are processing their personal data.
Any privacy notice must be written in a manner that is easy for the data subject to understand and where the data subject may be less able to understand (i.e. for a child) additional care must be taken to ensure it remains clear.
In circumstances where we receive a data subject’s data from a source other than the data subject, we must inform them of all of this within 30 days of receiving the data or before we begin to process it (whichever is the soonest).
How can ProvePrivacy Help?
ProvePrivacy’s RoPA module includes a Transparency Assessment, which allows users to review if an activity is included in the Privacy Notice. This in turn highlights any associated risks.
