- No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
This article protects your right to have privacy and to be able to protect your reputation and honour. No one is allowed to break into your house, access your personal information, harass you or your family, try to dishonour you, etc. This is why this article is also popularly known as “The Right to be Left Alone”.
Freedom from interference is getting harder and harder to avoid as technology advances. Every time we go online our data is collected and shared by and between different companies and parties. For the average human being, it can prove hard, if not impossible, to know what personal information is being collected and what it is being used for. Many people around the world are victims of cyber attacks from hackers through their phones and computers. Their identities are stolen, bank accounts are emptied, their private and personal information used as blackmail, etc. All of which is naturally illegal and a huge invasion of privacy and in many cases an attack on a person’s reputation and honour, if the information stolen is very sensitive. In these cases, this article states that victims have the right to protection of the law. However, it can be very hard to find these hackers as they can hide behind a variety of technology. This is the reason the European Union has a very strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This regulation is the protection of the personal data of all EU citizens. It means that all organizations, institutes, etc. that collect data from their users have very strict rules to follow as to how they collect, store, and protect their clients’ data.
This is what is protecting everyone’s personal information, for example, collected by your doctor, government, school, insurance companies, etc. This is legislation aiming to prevent hacking of large databases containing the personal information of individuals.
Written by Nanna Orloff Mortensen