What is personal data?

Definition

To remember

Personal data is any information relating to a natural person who can be identified, directly or indirectly.

For example: a name, a photo, a fingerprint, a postal address, an e-mail address, a telephone number, a social security number, a professional number, an IP address, a computer connection identifier, a voice recording, etc.

Some data is considered "sensitive", but we'll come back to this later.

Identification of individuals

A natural person can be identified:

• directly (e.g. name)
• indirectly (e.g. telephone or license number, social security number, postal or e-mail address, voice, photo, video, etc.).

A natural person can be identified:

• from a single piece of data (e.g. name)
• by cross-referencing a set of data (for example: a woman living at such and such an address, born on such and such a day, and a member of such and such an association).