LINDQUIST, 6.11.2003 (“LINDQUIST”)

Processing for purely personal or household activity: Creating a website for a Church which includes personal information of co-workers, constitutes activities that may be mainly charitable and religious, but are not exempted from data protection law under the ‘exclusively personal or domestic’ exemption. (¶¶ 45–47)

Charitable or religious activities such as those carried out by Mrs Lindqvist cannot be considered equivalent to the activities listed in the first indent of Article 3(2) of Directive 95/46 and are thus not covered by that exception.

As regards the exception provided for in the second indent of Article 3(2) of Directive 95/46, the 12th recital in the preamble to that directive, which concerns that exception, cites, as examples of the processing of data carried out by a natural person in the exercise of activities which are exclusively personal or domestic, correspondence and the holding of records of addresses.

That exception must therefore be interpreted as relating only to activities which are carried out in the course of private or family life of individuals, which is clearly not the case with the processing of personal data consisting in publication on the internet so that those data are made accessible to an indefinite number of people.