Interview for Radio Gdańsk, 16 September 2009

The activity of marketing companies was the subject of the interview given by Michał Serzycki, the Inspector General for Personal Data Protection, to Beata Szewczyk from Radio Gdańsk.

The journalist was interested in particular in the activity of telemarketing companies in the context of using personal data contained in publicly available sources as well as in the issue of sending commercial offers to entrepreneurs’ addresses.

Michał Serzycki explained that the Act on Personal Data Protection did not prohibit to use personal data from publicly available sources such as telephone directory.

Marketing companies can also do this. However, when they want to provide marketing information, they have to obtain the person’s consent and meet the information obligation, that is inform the person whose data has been collected from publicly available source inter alia on company’s address, purpose and scope of data collection and data source.

Marketing offers can also be sent to addresses of business entities, because data identifying an entrepreneur is not subject to protection  resulting from the provisions of the Act on Personal Data Protection.