Website Data Protection Notice

The EDPS website is our most important communication tool. Here we communicate our work such as our Opinions, data protection news and information about data protection rights to the general public as well as our more expert audiences.

Some of the services offered on our website require the processing of your personal data. In such cases, links are available on those pages directing you to the specific information data protection notices about that processing activity.

Here we give you a general overview of some of the ways this website processes your personal data including the use of cookies and social media.

Your personal data and our website

  • The EDPS collects your personal information only to the extent necessary to fulfil a precise purpose related to our tasks as an institution (which are laid down in Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions and bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 and Decision No 1247/2002/EC (hereinafter the Regulation)
  • We use features of the website to collect personal data in the context of the EDPS activities. In particular the website implements:

o    an EDPS contact form;
o    a form to send complaints to the EDPS on the way EU institutions process personal data;
o    a form for the EU institutions to notify personal data breaches based on the Regulation.


The activities processing of personal data carried out through these features are described in the relevant entries of the EDPS data protection records central register . The web pages containing those forms feature a link to relevant data protection notices, which will give you more specific info, including on how long we keep your personal data and your data protection rights (you can already find general information on your rights on this page).

We do not keep your personal information for longer than necessary for the purposes for which we collected it. However, we may keep your information for a longer period for historical, statistical or scientific purposes with the appropriate safeguards in place.

  • The IT services of the European Commission (EC) data centre, where the EDPS website is hosted, may process website connection data for information security purposes, including notably the IP address of the web client and the requested web resource. You can find more info in the relevant record in the EC register.
  • The security of our website and of the data collected is  protected by adequate technical and organisational measures. We protect data in transit between your client and our website by using the SSL secure protocol ensuring their confidentiality and integrity.
  • Under certain conditions outlined in law, we may disclose your information to third parties, (such as the European Anti-Fraud Office, the Court of Auditors, or law enforcement authorities) if it is necessary and proportionate for lawful, specific purposes.
  • If you have any remarks or complaints regarding the way we process your personal data, we invite you to contact the EDPS DPO.
  • You have, in any case, the right to have recourse to the EDPS as a supervisory authority.

Cookies

Cookies are short text files stored on a user’s device (such as a computer, tablet or phone) by a website, which could be used for the technical functioning of a website, for gathering statistics on the use of the website or for other purposes, such as to provide a user with a more personalised experience (for example, to enable an online service to remember your user profile without you having to login again).

Visit our cookies page for more information about the types of cookies this website uses.

Social Media - Your privacy

We use social media to present our work through widely used communications channels.

For instance, you can watch EDPS videos, which we also upload to our YouTube page and follow links from our website to Twitter and LinkedIn.

In order to protect your privacy, our social media buttons to connect to those services do not set cookies when our website pages are loaded on your device, nor you are immediately redirected to social media or other websites.

Each social media channel has their own policy on the way they process your personal data when you access their sites. For example, if you choose to watch one of our videos on YouTube, you will be asked for explicit consent to accept YouTube cookies; if you look at our Twitter activity on Twitter, you will be asked for explicit consent to accept Twitter cookies; the same applies for LinkedIn.

If you have any concerns or questions about their use of your personal data, you should read their privacy policies carefully before using them.

Our social media moderation policy

The European Data Protection Supervisor is present on social media to communicate about his work and better engage with the public. We are present on LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube and we encourage you to share our content and take part in our discussions. Please note the  accounts we follow are not an indication of our endorsement.

The EDPS social media accounts are managed by the EDPS Information and Communication Sector and are monitored daily to the greatest possible extent, but not on a 24-hour basis.

We are happy to see different views and opinions on our social media accounts, however we ask you to observe a fundamental principle of good behaviour. Please show respect to fellow users and avoid inflammatory, insulting or offensive language. We reserve the right to not respond to, hide or delete all the comments that are defamatory, racist, spam, repetitive, irrelevant and/or commercial. Users that post violent, threatening or clearly illegal content will be blocked. We encourage you to post comments that stick to the subject and contribute to the ongoing debates.