> Examples of personal data
> [...]
> an Internet Protocol (IP) address;
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
I think such reasoning is a little unfortunate.
Multiple people share my name. Multiple people could live in or visit my household.
So is my name and address not PII?
I don't think that underlining all the cases where some given bit of information may fail to identify a person is the right approach when it comes to making a blanket statement about whether said info is PII. I don't think courts would follow that reasoning either, especially when there will be lots and lots of counterexamples where following that trail of information leads to facts that most people would conclude as identifying a person exactly (at least with a very high degree of certainty).
That's the detailed version of the ruling. The ruling refers to IP adresses with time and date, as explained in point 37.
>a dynamic IP address registered by an online media services provider [...] constitutes personal data within the meaning of that provision, in relation to that provider, where the latter has the legal means which enable it to identify the data subject with additional data which the internet service provider has about that person.
So IPs and time stamps are not PII by themselves.
So the title on HN is misleading. Especially given the most important part of the article:
"The CJEU decided that a dynamic IP address will be personal data in the hands of a website operator if:
- there is another party (such as an ISP) that can link the dynamic IP address to the identity of an individual; and
- the website operator has a "legal means" of obtaining access to the information held by the ISP in order to identify the individual."
And it's known that the "legal means of obtaining access to that information" is very often present.
You also, by the way, must remove any geographic information more specific than a state, such as ZIP codes. So it doesn’t say much to include IP addresses in the deidentification list.