Processing personal data under Art. 6.1.f GDPR - The Concept of Legitimate Interest made easy

Essay from the year 2019 in the subject Law - Data protection, grade: N/A, , language: English, abstract: The goal of this article, as stipulated by its title, is to bring this complex notion to the understanding of every privacy stakeholder. The protection of personal data has been a major preoccupation of the European legislators in recent years. Apart from data protection being a fundamental Human Right, it is worth noting that almost all the other fundamental Human Rights rely on personal data. For instance, if a person's personal data such as name, address, bank details and location falls into wrong hands as a result inappropriate data protection policies, the damages may range from financial losses to bodily harm-thus affecting the individual's right to property, life et cetera. It is for these reasons that the General Data Protection Regulation lays down conditions under which personal data must be processed, grants a list of rights to data subjects and fixes very heavy fines that await defaulters. Among the lawful grounds for processing personal data, is the legitimate interest pursued by the controller. This ground is mostly used by online marketing companies. Considering that the GDPR gives no clear definition of 'legitimate interest', this article provides a clear understanding of such interest, the circumstances under which it may arise, as well as a balancing exercise and guiding factors that would help in understanding whether the legitimate interest pursued by the controller actually overrides the fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject-a precondition for processing personal data under such grounds.