Summary

Protection of personal data is an important person’s right in the EU, established under Article 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union: everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her. In order to guarantee this, directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data was adopted in 1995. Although this is not directly applicable to the Member States of the European Union, the regulation established under this directive has been incorporated into all national data protection laws.

Since the directive was developed in the early days of the use of the Internet and data was usually processed automatically by businesses, a situation in which large amounts of personal data is controlled, used and possessed by users of different Web sites could not be foreseen. Due to that, amidst new technologies, the directive does not give unambiguous and clear instructions on whether users of social networks could also be the persons to which the directive’s numerous obligations concerning treatment of personal data apply, in addition to the operators of such networks.

This article analyses whether, firstly, the obligations related to processing of personal data under the directive could in principle also be applied to Facebook users and if yes, whether there are any exceptions that preclude or restrict application of these obligations under the directive: exception of personal and domestic purposes, exception of press, literary or artistic purposes, or the exception of the catch-all clause. In the end of the article, practical problems to the users are covered that may arise upon application of the obligations under the directive.