## Personal data

Reading time
10 minutes

What you will learn
You will learn what personal data/special personal data is and why it is valuable information to have during your studies.

Summary
Personal data is all information about an identifiable natural person, such as their name, gender, sexual preference, email address and citizen service number. Both the education institution and you yourself must take particular care to ensure this data is properly protected. Even if you will be working with other people's personal data, for example when doing research or a work placement, you must know exactly how you are required to handle personal data.

####

## What do you have to hide?

Nothing, right? So why would we worry about privacy? Good question. Perhaps this video clip can provide a preliminary answer:

Oops, so you actually do indeed have something you want to hide... Much of the information about people that is discussed in this video clip is referred to as ‘personal data’. Personal data includes all information which can be traced back to you as a unique individual. And why is it important to know this? Because you can also do some very unpleasant things with other people's personal data.

Have a look:

Consider for a moment: which data do you want to avoid sharing with others?

####

## Personal data

OK, so it's important to refrain from carelessly scattering your personal data all over the place. But what exactly is ‘personal data’ anyway? Basically, it is any data which on its own, or in combination with other personal data, can be traced back to you as a unique individual.

Do you remember the game ‘Who am I?’ on the right? In this game, you combine various kinds of personal data, so you can eventually guess the identity of the person concerned correctly. It works the same way with your own personal data. The mere fact that you have brown hair is not personal data, but it is considered personal data if you are the only person in your class with that colour hair. On its own, your first name is in many cases insufficient to be able to identify you, but it is enough if your last name and house number are also known.

Examples of personal data: your name, address/email address and place of residence. But also telephone numbers, bank account numbers, study results and postcodes together with house numbers are considered personal data.

Consider for a moment: which personal data can you name about yourself?

## Special categories of personal data

And yes, ‘special’ categories of personal data exists, too! The law provides for additional protection of this special category of data; not a single organisation is allowed to retrieve this data about you, unless an exception applies under the law. One of these exceptions is ‘consent’: as soon as you give your consent for an organisation to save your special personal data, the organisation is legally permitted to do so.

Special categories of personal data are:

- racial or ethnic origin
- political opinions
- religious or philosophical beliefs
- trade union membership
- genetic data
- biometric data (where used for identification purposes)
- health
- sex life

Consider for a moment: which special personal data ‘forms’ your identity?

## And now?

What use is all this information about personal data? Read the text from the Dutch Data Protection Authority below:

Every time you use personal data, that constitutes an infringement of the privacy of the people whose data you are using. You are therefore only permitted to use personal data if it is truly unavoidable, i.e. if you cannot fulfil your purpose without this data.

This means that if an organisation such as your education institution wants to use personal data, but also if you yourself want to use it when doing a work placement or research, for instance, you must both have a good reason for doing so. Such a reason is referred to as a ‘lawful basis’. There exist six different lawful bases on which you can legally use personal data, for example if someone has given you their consent, if there is a legal obligation to do so or if the personal data is necessary for the performance of a contract (e.g. an employment contract).

In the remainder of this module, the term ‘personal data’ will appear again in various places. Now you know exactly what it means and of course what the significance of that personal data/special personal data is.

Good luck with the rest of this module!

Want to find out more about the privacy legislation? Go right ahead!

Everything about the privacy legislation (GDPR)