New student guidelines published for processing personal data in thesis projects and other study assignments
When you process personal data as part of a thesis project or some other study assignment, you must comply with the data protection legislation. We have recently published a Finnish version (English translation is also coming up) of comprehensive guidelines that will help you understand how to collect and process personal data in a secure way.
What qualifies as personal data?
Personal data refers to all data that can be used to identify a person directly or indirectly. For example, the following data qualifies as personal data:
- name
- home address
- email address
- IP address
- phone number
- photograph or a video recording featuring a person that can be identified from them
- voice, if a person can be identified based on their voice
- student number
Even indirect information, such as a rare job title or a nickname, may count as personal data if they can be used to identify a person.
What does the processing of personal data entail?
The processing of personal data refers to all the different ways of using personal data. For example, this may entail collecting, viewing, storing, modifying or deleting of data.
If your thesis project deals with living individuals, it is likely that you process personal data in your work. For example, collecting of data with a questionnaire or an interview or by observing or by recording a video counts as processing of personal data. When you process personal data, you must comply with data protection legislation.
More information
You can ask for more information and support from your thesis supervisor or from the data protection officer of Uniarts Helsinki (tietosuoja@uniarts.fi).