Everyone has the right to know what data a company has stored about them and from what sources and has passed it on to third parties. But what happens to this right to information under data protection law if the person concerned makes their email address publicly available on the internet? The Leipzig District Court had to decide on this.
A lawyer had been invited to the Hessian Medical Law Day by the organizer via email. The lawyer then demanded that the organizer issue a declaration to cease and desist and provide information about what data was stored and for what purpose, where it came from and to whom it was transmitted. The organizer's response was that the lawyer had been removed from the mailing list for future events and that his name and address had been taken from the Internet. The lawyer was not satisfied with this answer. He sued for the statutory right to information.
The court's decision
In its judgment of 18.07.2014 - Ref. 10 C 2154/14, the Local Court of Leipzig questioned whether the lawyer is entitled to information at all under Data Protection Law is entitled to. This is because he himself had made his email address public on the internet and thus enabled access to this data. The court ruled that he himself knew how the organizer knew his email address. With regard to the lawyer's request for information as to which third parties his data may have been passed on to, the court stated that the organizer had already tacitly denied the transfer of data to third parties in his reply. However, this point would also be irrelevant because third parties could obtain the email address via the Internet at any time. In the opinion of the court, there was no case in which confidential personal data could be passed on to third parties.
Conclusion
Anyone who makes their data public on the Internet, for example through a business listing, may forfeit their right to information under data protection law or parts thereof.
EN 
DE