What Data Am I Allowed to Collect?

There's a lot you can achieve if you get hold of some exciting data and have the knowledge and expertise to structure and process it sensibly. Efficiency and automation, new insights, brand-new products and services. The possibilities are endless!

There's just one thing you must not forget: You need to know that this is data you’re actually allowed to use, and that you are handling the information in a lawful way.

It's one thing to utilise data about weather conditions in the mountains, how many employees you usually need at work during the Christmas season, the pressure in the factory pipes, or which way the graphs are pointing in the accounts. This is data you probably own, or which is public and can be used freely.

But of course, there are also data that you are not legally allowed to collect or process. This applies especially when the data can be linked to individuals—something that is more common than you might think. This is now personal information, and suddenly we are in the territory of the famous General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

So, what is the GDPR really? What are you allowed to do? What rights do the individuals we want to collect data about have? And how do you navigate the legislation in a way that can strengthen your project, instead of tripping it up?

In this section, you will get to know what is legal, what is smart, and what is okay when it comes to data collection and privacy.