Which marketing-related activity is least likely to be covered by the provisions of Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (Directive 2002/58/EC)?
Correct Answer:
A
A U.S.-based online shop uses sophisticated software to track the browsing behavior of its European customers and predict future purchases. It also shares this information with third parties. Under the GDPR, what is the online shop’s PRIMARY obligation while engaging in this kind of profiling?
Correct Answer:
A
SCENARIO
Please use the following to answer the next question:
Joe started the Gummy Bear Company in 2000 from his home in Vermont, USA. Today, it is a
multi-billion-dollar candy company operating in every continent. All of the company’s IT servers are located in Vermont. This year Joe hires his son Ben to join the company and head up Project Big, which is a major marketing strategy to triple gross revenue in just 5 years. Ben graduated with a PhD in computer software from a top university. Ben decided to join his father’s company, but is also secretly working on launching a new global online dating website company called Ben Knows Best.
Ben is aware that the Gummy Bear Company has millions of customers and believes that many of them might also be interested in finding their perfect match. For Project Big, Ben redesigns the company’s online web portal and requires customers in the European Union and elsewhere to provide additional personal information in order to remain a customer. Project Ben begins collecting data about customers’ philosophical beliefs, political opinions and marital status.
If a customer identifies as single, Ben then copies all of that customer’s personal data onto a separate database for Ben Knows Best. Ben believes that he is not doing anything wrong, because he explicitly asks each customer to give their consent by requiring them to check a box before accepting their information. As Project Big is an important project, the company also hires a first year college student named Sam, who is studying computer science to help Ben out.
Ben calls out and Sam comes across the Ben Knows Best database. Sam is planning on going to Ireland over Spring Beak with 10 of his friends, so he copies all of the customer information of people that reside in Ireland so that he and his friends can contact people when they are in Ireland.
Joe also hires his best friend’s daughter, Alice, who just graduated from law school in the U.S., to be the company’s new General Counsel. Alice has heard about the GDPR, so she does some research on it. Alice approaches Joe and informs him that she has drafted up Binding Corporate Rules for everyone in the company to follow, as it is important for the company to have in place a legal mechanism to transfer data internally from the company’s operations in the European Union to the U.S.
Joe believes that Alice is doing a great job, and informs her that she will also be in-charge of handling a major lawsuit that has been brought against the company in federal court in the U.S. To prepare for the lawsuit, Alice instructs the company’s IT department to make copies of the computer hard drives from the entire global sales team, including the European Union, and send everything to her so that she can review everyone’s information. Alice believes that Joe will be happy that she did the first level review, as it will save the company a lot of money that would otherwise be paid to its outside law firm.
The data transfer mechanism that Alice drafted violates the GDPR because the company did not first get approval from?
Correct Answer:
C
SCENARIO
Please use the following to answer the next question:
TripBliss Inc. is a travel service company which has lost substantial revenue over the last few years. Their new manager, Oliver, suspects that this is partly due to the company’s outdated website. After doing some research, he meets with a sales representative from the up-and-coming IT company Techiva, hoping that they can design a new, cutting-edge website for TripBliss Inc.’s foundering business.
During negotiations, a Techiva representative describes a plan for gathering more customer information through detailed Questionaires, which could be used to tailor their preferences to specific travel destinations. TripBliss Inc. can choose any number of data categories – age, income, ethnicity – that would help them best accomplish their goals. Oliver loves this idea, but would also like to have some way of gauging how successful this approach is, especially since the Questionaires will require customers to provide explicit consent to having their data collected. The Techiva representative suggests that they also run a program to analyze the new website’s traffic, in order to get a better understanding of how customers are using it. He explains his plan to place a number of cookies on customer devices. The cookies will allow the company to collect IP addresses and other information, such as the sites from which the customers came, how much time they spend on the TripBliss Inc. website, and which pages on the site they visit. All of this information will be compiled in log files, which Techiva will analyze by means of a special program. TripBliss Inc. would receive aggregate statistics to help them evaluate the website’s effectiveness. Oliver enthusiastically engages Techiva for these services.
Techiva assigns the analytics portion of the project to longtime account manager Leon Santos. As is standard practice, Leon is given administrator rights to TripBliss Inc.’s website, and can authorize access to the log files gathered from it. Unfortunately for TripBliss Inc., however, Leon is taking on this new project at a time when his dissatisfaction with Techiva is at a high point. In order to take revenge for what he feels has been unfair treatment at the hands of the company, Leon asks his friend Fred, a hobby hacker, for help. Together they come up with the following plan: Fred will hack into Techiva’s system and copy their log files onto a USB stick. Despite his initial intention to send the USB to the press and to the data protection authority in order to denounce Techiva, Leon experiences a crisis of conscience and ends up reconsidering his plan. He decides instead to securely wipe all the data from the USB stick and inform his manager that the company’s system of access control must be reconsidered.
After Leon has informed his manager, what is Techiva’s legal responsibility as a processor?
Correct Answer:
B
Article 5(1)(b) of the GDPR states that personal data must be “collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a way incompatible with those purposes.” Based on Article 5(1)(b),
what is the impact of a member state’s interpretation of the word “incompatible”?
Correct Answer:
A
