Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods

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Firms in general are not allowed to identify individuals. some exceptions are for example, in case of processing of online transactions (financial security), user-requested authentication, or multimedia content player cookies that store technical data for the duration of a session where video or audio content is played on a website. however, legislation applies, especially to the storage methods used to store data that allows the identification of users. data containing critical/personal information could be stored in a way that renders them anonymous.

Conclusion

The improvement of personal data collection and processing is clearly being given higher importance with time, and this shows when following the timeline of the directives starting 1995 and the amendments to follow, directive of 2002, and until reaching the directive of 2016 that will be in effect starting 2018.

From my perspective, I can still see a room for improvement in terms of data acquisition methods, and the ground rules to process personal data and disclose them for other parties. The high amount of exceptions to the laws protecting the privacy of individuals leaves room for misuse of data. Special attention could be directed towards the monitoring of behavioral activities on the web for the purposes of predicting or directing ads, as well as technologies that allow the data controller to identify the location of the individual in real time.

References:

- Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/1995/46/oj

- Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (Directive on privacy and electronic communications), http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:32002L0058

- Directive (EU) 2016/680 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Council Framework Decision 2008/977/JHA, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32016L0680