Dutch Data Protection Authority: Chamber of Commerce must protect residential addresses of self-employed persons – IT Pro – News

The Dutch Data Protection Authority advises the outgoing government to tackle the Trade Register of the Chamber of Commerce. According to the privacy watchdog, residential addresses of self-employed people should only be public for certain professions.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority writes that in a letter to outgoing State Secretary for Economic Affairs Mona Keijzer. The letter is in response to a government request. At the beginning of this year, he wanted an advice from the AP about the Trade Register and how this relates to the GDPR. In the letter, the privacy supervisor recommends changing a few things about the register. This specifically concerns Article 51 of the Trade Register Act, which regulates which data is public. The AP specifically mentions the fact that residential addresses of ‘natural persons’ must be protected.

According to the Trade Register Act, the Chamber of Commerce is obliged to keep track of the addresses of all companies in the Netherlands, but also to make them available. This is a problem in particular for freelancers; for them, ‘the business address is in fact also the home address’. Addresses of owners or members of companies are also registered.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority wants such residential addresses to be better protected in order to better protect the privacy of the self-employed. The AP acknowledges that this is contrary to the purpose of the Trade Register. However, the interest served by legal certainty in economic transactions is not absolute and must always be weighed up against the interest – and the fundamental right – of the person concerned in the protection of his privacy and the protection of his personal data. AP. This is only the case if the business address is actually the same as the home address of the entrepreneur. For example, it is also possible to use a PO box as a business address, but many entrepreneurs find this too expensive or impractical.

The Trade Register has been criticized by many freelancers for years. This not only leads to a lot of unwanted advertising, for example, but also often to stalking or threats. the AP cites the example himself from a self-employed person in psychiatry whose patients can visit them at home, or from freelance journalists who often work as self-employed persons. “So it does not seem necessary to make residential addresses of self-employed people accessible to everyone. And it does cause all kinds of problems. That has to change,” says AP chairman Aleid Wolfsen.

The AP therefore wants addresses of self-employed persons not to be made public in the Trade Register by default. The watchdog then proposes that the information can only be requested by certain professional groups. The AP specifically mentions lawyers, civil-law notaries and bailiffs, but also ‘in some cases’ journalists.

The advice comes a day after it turned out that the Chamber of Commerce had accidentally leaked addresses of members of the House of Representatives. This happened precisely after it turned out that a lawyer had access to the Trade Register longer than necessary. The advice of the AP is therefore not a response to that data breach. It is in response to a question that the government already asked in February. The AP had already sent the letter to Keijzer in June, and was already planning to make it public later.

The letter does not automatically mean that the Chamber of Commerce will also adjust its course of action. That is up to the cabinet, which is currently still outgoing. It is not clear whether the subject will only be taken up after the formation of a new cabinet, or whether Keijzer wants to do so now.

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