Establishing, accessing, sharing and using personal data are essential to successful “direct marketing” practices. These are concerned with identifying and meeting people’s needs and preferences directly, i.e. through direct channels of communication and not through traditional channels of distribution. To achieve this direct and productive method of selling, marketers target only the consumers whose personal information suggests that a certain product/service may be of interest to them. The relevant customers can only be pinpointed through the utilization of databases.
Nevertheless, direct marketing can involve a misuse of databases and the soliciting of unwilling recipients. Such actions entail a violation of people’s data protection rights and the law seeks to strike the right balance between an efficient marketing practice and the protection of individual privacy rights.
European Data Protection Directive
The most important piece of legislation in the area is the European Data Protection Directive 1995 that has been implemented in all European Union (EU) member states and with which companies have to comply in order not to misuse personal data. The directive deals with the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. Objective of the directive: data-processing systems are designed to serve man; whereas they must, whatever the nationality or residence of natural persons, respect their fundamental rights and freedoms, notably the right to privacy, and contribute to economic and social progress, trade expansion and the well-being of individuals.
Harmonization of EU Member states’ protection regimes has not been achieved fully and uncertainty still lies as to the precise scope of the “personal data” notion. However, the general idea conveyed by the directive is that it is generally regarded as legal to hold and use data on individuals for marketing purposes if the data was in the public domain or if data subjects were informed of purpose of data collection and did not object to possibility of direct marketing.
It should also be noted that under the directive, individuals have a right to access to personal data, to request a rectification and to object to direct marketing.