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International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications
Common Position
on
relating to Reverse Directories
adopted at the 23rd Meeting in Hong Kong SAR, China
15 April 1998
The reverse directories are processes of personal data constituted from the directories. The process consisting in obtaining the identity and address of a person from a calling number (phone or fax) or from an e-mail can have some important negative effects on privacy and should, from them on, be subjected to specific rules of protection of the rights of persons.
However, some States have regulations forbidding the operators of telecomrnunications settled on their territory to offer services of reverse directories. In this context, the delegations which met in Hong-Kong on April, l4th and l5th 1998 in the International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications,
observe that,
- In the framework of private relations between persons, the existence of reverse directories, without specific rules of protection, can give rise to serious threats to privacy;
- The commercial utilization of reverse directories can have consequences likely to be harmful to the persons who, especially on the occasion of the diffusion of a rent or sale proposition, would have wished to indicate only their phone-number;
- The purpose of a reverse directory is not the same as the purpose of a phone directory; a phone directory allows to obtain the phone number of a known person, from his name and a geographic criterium, whereas the purpose of a reverse directory is the search of the identity and address of subscribers where only their phone number is known;
- The fact for a subscriber to appear in a phone directory must Iead, as shown by the common position expressed by the International Working Group at its meeting in Berlin in 1989, to the right not to appear in it or to oppose to the commercial utilization of his (or her) data, but he could agree that a person who would only have his phone number, may obtain his address and identity by using a service of reverse search.
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- Although, the resort to a reverse directory may serve some legitimate interests in some cases, such as the protection of human life or public safety, the regular communication of the identity and address of a subscriber on the basis of his phone number, if it is carried out with regard to persons who could not beforehand have objected to the utilization of such a device with regard to them, constitutes an unfair collection of information.
- The process relating to invoicing data, detailed invoicing or to the presentation of a number of the calling line, now, shall be analyzed considering the services of reverse search or reverse directory;
agree that, if the reverse directories are not forbidden by law,
- they are services which require the express consent given voluntarily. At least the right to object and the right of access generally recognized by existing national and international rules on the protection of personal data shall be guaranteed;
- It is in any case necessary to endow the persons with the right to be informed by their provider of telephone or e-mail service, at the time of the collection of data concerning them, or if they have already subscribed , by a specific means of information, of the existence of services of reverse search and - if express consent is not required - of their right to object, free of charge, to such a search.
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