A building management company put up notices in public areas of buildings - Enquiry Case Notes

No： 0225/C/2012

Title： A building management company put up notices in public areas of buildings

Content：

　　Building Management Company A (hereinafter as Company A) put up notices in the communal area of the building, listing all the flat-owners’ payment of the management fee (paid or overdue amount). Citizen A asked if posting as such conforms to the Personal Data Protection Act.

Result：

　　As Citizen A failed to provide detailed and specific information about the case, the GPDP could only provide the following opinions based on general personal data processing:
　　According to Articles 4(1)(1) as well as 3(1) of the Personal Data Protection Act (Law 8/2005), the data processing aforementioned is subject to the Personal Data Protection Act.
　　In addition, according to Article 6 of the same Law, Company A can process personal data based on the legitimacy which originated from the consent of data subjects or other situations as provided by laws. For example, in times a data controller intends to generate its legitimate interests, wherein interests of data subject(s) do not prioritise. Moreover, during data processing a data controller shall also comply with the relevant processing principles, the principle of proportionality, for instance. Company A supervises the communal area of the building, so it has the rights to charge the flat-owners for the management fee and claim for late payments. In other words, in order to collect unpaid fees, Company A has the legitimacy to process the flat-owners’ personal data. Furthermore, in accordance with the Civil Code, flat-owners supervise accounts, managed by management companies as its duties, for the maintenance of the communal parts of their building. Therefore, Company A posted notices of the accounts in the communal area was only to make the owners aware. In the GPDP’s preliminary analysis, violations of the personal data processing principles were not found.

Reference：
Please refer to "Personal Data Protection Act", articles 3，4，6 .

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個人資料保護辦公室

Gabinete para a Protecção de Dados Pessoais

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