What is a violation of privacy and how should citizens act when their privacy is violated?

The Agency for Information and Privacy (AIP), which has the legal responsibility for overseeing the legitimacy of personal data processing and access to public documents, also handles cases of privacy violations.

AIP Commissioner, Krenare Sogojeva-Dermaku, has announced what constitutes a violation of privacy and what steps should be followed by citizens in these cases.

"Any use of data that directly or indirectly leads to a violation of a person's integrity is a violation of privacy," says Sogojeva-Dermaku.

In such cases, Sogojeva-Dermaku has called on citizens to report these cases to the AIP, on the website or even on the phone numbers of this agency.

The use of social networks in relation to the misuse of personal data, according to Sogojeva-Dermaku, has its own consequences and for this reason citizens should be careful, especially when dealing with sensitive data.

In this case, Sogojeva-Dermaku, spoke about cases that have been reviewed by the AIP, which have to do with children's data, complaints that were then sent to the Kosovo Police.

"Because of this publication, which can be made by the citizen who publishes it or the child himself who is not controlled by the parent, we have had cases where not only the child was lynched and not only did he fall into a deep depression, but the entire family was lynched, so we must be careful," said Sogojeva-Dermaku.

AIP also, after a complaint it had received from a citizen, forced a company to delete a CV that had been published, since the same person had not given permission for this publication.

Meanwhile, private data also includes the private telephone number.

"The telephone number is included in one of the directly private data of citizens, depending on the position it holds and the public interest, and based on the complaint addressed to us by the party, we contact the telephone operators if the number is registered as a private or business number, or a public number, and if we find that it is private, we immediately react," said Sogojeva-Dermaku.

AIP has also made similar decisions for media outlets that had published the private numbers of public officials.

"We have obliged seven media outlets to remove the phone number of a public official, because we found that the phone number was a private number and not an official number," announced the AIP commissioner.

A similar case was when AIP published its decision obliging journalist and owner of the Nacionale newspaper, Berat Buzhala, to delete a post on social networks, because the post contained personal data of the party.

The decision, which was published on 14.02.2025, highlights that a party had expressed concern to the Information and Privacy Agency regarding the case when Berat Buzhala had published on his Facebook profile a conversation between him (the complainant) and Buzhala.

The publication of this conversation on Facebook caused the person whose name and number were published to receive numerous mocking and denigrating messages.

Regarding this case, AIP on 17.12.2024, received a complaint where a person had expressed his concern, after Buzhala on 14.12.2024 had published on Facebook the private conversation between him and another person - an action that was done without the prior consent of the complainant.

The complaint to the AIP states that Buzhala had created a WhatsApp group, where he had included the complainant's phone number, exposing him to other individuals, and from this case the complainant had received mocking and denigrating messages.

The Agency for Information and Privacy AIP, after receiving the Complaint, through the AIP official, on 23.12.2024, addressed Buzhala via e-mail, informing him of the complaint made by the person whose name and number had been published and also asking him to notify the Agency within 3 days of the purpose of publishing the conversation, along with the complainant's phone number./Kallxo.com/