Why IP addresses are not always personal data?
Transcript
The internet's built on IP addresses. They're used to route network traffic from one computer to another. But are they personal data? This is a question that's been hotly debated. Well, data protection laws are about risk of harm to people. And on their own, a sequence of characters or numbers like an IP address or even a credit card or a mobile phone number aren't going to harm anyone. It's how they're used that matters. So if they're use just to route traffic, they're not personal data. If they're used for aggregate analysis, for example, to join a group of web sessions by country. They're not personal data. They only become personal data if they are used in a way that might harm people. So that could include profiling them or using the IP address to link to real-world identifications like a name or a postal address or even an email address. So at 51Degrees, we care deeply about this subject because we want to ensure that you're clear about how we use. Data that you might share with us in the course of using our services. So find out more on the website and then contact us to discuss further.