The Austrian data protection commission has condemned the marketing firm dm-plus. The firm created a CD-ROM for the company Herold with name and address data of over 4 million Austrian citizens. The disk also contained additional information about 2 million Austrians, such as date of birth, title, type of household, income and civil status. Herold was awarded the people's choice Big Brother Award in 2003. More than 80% of the 250 nominations concerned this company.

Arge Daten, a not-for-profit, non-governmental Austrian privacy organisation, demanded access and correction of the stored data on behalf of several members. The replies were not satisfactory. Arge Daten then sent formal complaints to the data protection authority (DSK) but these complaints were ignored. Only after several complaints to the administrative court did the data protection authority investigate the matter. In this first decision, the Commission objects especially to the collection of the exact dates of birth. Secondly, the company is reproached for not telling about the purposes of the data processing, and the further processing by third parties, including both Herold and the mother company in Switzerland (where data were allegedly sent for 'back-up purposes')

But Arge Daten is disappointed Herold nor dm-plus had to answer questions about the origins of the collected data. The Commission agreed the company would incur disproportionate costs by such an obligation. According to Arge Daten this is nonsense, since companies that specialise in collecting and processing data can easily add a unique originating code to each batch of data.

DSK-Entscheidung zu Herold-Datenlieferanten (18.12.2004)
http://www.argedaten.at/news/20041218.html

Österreich: Adressensammler verletzt Datenschutz (25.12.2004)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/54620