post purchase - photos online

[Leo]

You, and a few others in this thread, are over complicating this.

No, I'm trying to focus on what is explicitly covered in the legislation, and what others think might be or should be.

Your home address is personal data. Combined with other personal data, you can be identified.

Your home address can become personal data when the data controller maintains an association between that address and you. The legislation is clear on that, but addresses are a matter of public record, in and of themselves they are not covered in the legislation.

As also stated earlier, property ownership in Ireland is also a matter of public record. The government will on request (and subject to a fee) provide you with the details of the owner of any property in the state. How clear does it need to be that this information is not subject to GDPR?

Again, can you clarify how MyHome becomes a data controller in relation to the purchaser of a property under the terms of the legislation?

Pictures and videos of your home with your personal address tagged to it is an invasion of privacy. Would you like it if pics and vids of inside and outside of your home was on youtube, with your address tagged to it?

Pictures and videos of my current and former homes are online, I don't have an issue with that. When selling my previous home I signed a contract allowing the EAs to publish photos via MyHome and Daft. Those photos were and continue to be my property, as published they do not reveal my or the other owner's identities. Neither of those entities ever had access to my name, and so they did not become data controllers as defined in law.

 

[azlana]

Wow I wasn't expecting this to spark a GDPR debate but all very interesting

 

[ArthurMcB]

Pictures and videos of my current and former homes are online, I don't have an issue with that

Many would though, particularly videos of ones current home.

 

[losttheplot]

If I buy a house that was featured in the property section of the Irish Times, photos and description of the house etc, can I ask them to remove it? Wouldn't have thought so.
If the previous owner has pictures on Facebook and their profile isn't private, I couldn't ask for them to be removed.

I could understand if there were family pictures on the wall that could identify someone, but then these would be of the previous owner.
I do agree that they should come off the site as if it looks like it's still for sale, you could have house hunters driving by for a look.

 

[24601]

Many would though, particularly videos of ones current home.

That's grand. I don't know why, but each to their own. The EA will more than likely have no bother taking down the photos but the fact remains that they are not personal data as yourself and @Johnno75 have persisted in claiming despite a number of posters explaining very clearly and in great detail how that is not the case.

 

[ArthurMcB]

but the fact remains that they are not personal data

Your home address is your personal data. A quick google will confirm that.

 

[arbitron]

Your home address is your personal data. A quick google will confirm that.

It is only personal data in certain contexts.

101091 could be my date of birth or my medical record number (both potential personal data), or just a random string of digits. It depends on the context.

 

[Leo]

Your home address is your personal data. A quick google will confirm that.

Addresses of and by themselves do not constitute personal data. Addresses are public record, streets have signs, houses have numbers....all very public. Then look up the Eircode site, pick any property in the country from the map and it'll give you the full address including Eircode. Look up Google, Apple, Garmin or countless other mapping services, they all contain databases of every address in the country. This does not make them data controllers.

Again, I ask you to clarify what in the legislation is it you think makes MyHome a data controller for the OP in the context of a listing of a property from before the time they purchased it?

 

[24601]

Addresses of and by themselves do not constitute personal data. Addresses are public record, streets have signs, houses have numbers....all very public. Then look up the Eircode site, pick any property in the country from the map and it'll give you the full address including Eircode. Look up Google, Apple, Garmin or countless other mapping services, they all contain databases of every address in the country. This does not make them data controllers.

Again, I ask you to clarify what in the legislation is it you think makes MyHome a data controller for the OP in the context of a listing of a property from before the time they purchased it?

You're wasting your time. It has been explained to them an endless number of times at this stage.

 

[Okokokoknic]

What’s “PII”?

Tell me you've never sat through GDPR training without telling me you've never sat through GDPR training.

 

[lff12]

So you re saying that photos,published on the internet, of the outside of someones family home, with their address tagged to it - is not their personal data?

Why not? If their phone number is their personal data then i dont see why the above isnt.

If what you are saying is correct,then I would think it should be classified as personal data.

Its not - it has to be actually associated with a personal subject. Unless you are in the photos or somehow referenced, its not a breach of GPDR.
Same goes for Landdirect - anybody can purchase the folio for 5 euro for the property and find out who lives there, but the photos of the exterior and interior of a particular property tell you nothing except that the property is or was for sale or sold.

GDPR is about people, not inanimate objects with no personal references.

 

[lff12]

Simple. Personal example. I purchased a distinctive house outside a town a few years ago. Detached, on its own site. The EA didn’t remove pics nor did he remove the address immediately after the sale.

Several local colleagues and friends of mine contacted me after the sale closed to congratulate me on the acquisition and to say that my new house looked lovely on Daft.ie.

If you’re more nifty and curious, you can do a Property Registration search against the address to establish the owner.

Whilst I had no problem with friends and colleagues admiring the house, I wasn’t comfortable with others who might be curious for different reasons.

Correct - but you cannot do the same in reverse in order to find out where a particular individual lives. So you need to already have a need or desire to know the address before you can identify a person.
But all the same, that goes for every single property on landirect, going right back to the early 90s, and not just properties whose photos happen to be on the internet. Removing the photos does not stop someone from photographing or viewing its exterior, and even if the photos were to be removed, you can still find them on wayback engines and search engine caches.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Reply from the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner.

I acknowledge receipt of your email to this office dated 19 August 2022.

The definition of “personal data” under Article 4(2) of the GDPR is “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person […] who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of a natural person”.

Please note that photographs of a property would not constitute personal data for the purposes of the GDPR as you cannot be identified by photographs of a property alone.

You may wish to contact the customer service department of the Estate Agents to request removal of the photographs, however, the DPC would not be in a position to assist you as data protection law would not engage in this instance.

I regret we cannot be of further assistance.