Guide to Chile’s Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL)
In this guide:
Summary of the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL)
Chile enacted a dedicated data privacy law “On the protection of private life” which is more commonly known as the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL), thereby recognizing the need to protect individuals’ privacy in the digital age. This landmark legislation is designed to regulate the handling of personal data by ensuring informed consent is given before a business processes personal data and providing Chilean residents with enumerated data privacy rights. Plus, the PDPL requires businesses implement effective proactive security measures to shield personal data from external threat actors. This law was the first of its kind in Latin America, and should be applauded as such.
In more recent years, data privacy has emerged as a critical concern worldwide. The digitization of information and increasing reliance on technology have led to the collection and processing of vast amounts of personal data by organizations, inspiring international data protection standards to be established around the world. Chile’s PDPL serves the same purpose and aligns with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Generally speaking, Chile’s PDPL states that an individual’s personal data can only be processed if:
- The use case is specifically permitted by law.
- Based on the user’s prior informed consent recorded in writing.
An individual’s data can only be processed if both of these stipulations are true. There are a few appropriately narrow exceptions to this, like if the information is already available publicly.
At its core, the PDPL empowers individuals by providing them with greater control over their personal data. It gives them the right to know who is collecting their data, for what purposes, and how it will be used. Additionally, individuals have the ability to revoke their consent and request the deletion of their data, enhancing their privacy rights.
Key provisions of the law include:
- Data Processing Principles: Fundamental principles are established for the processing of personal data, ensuring that data controllers and processors adhere to all guidelines. These include lawfulness, fairness and transparency in data processing.
- Data Subject Rights: Individuals are given a range of rights regarding their personal data. These rights include:
- The right to access your data.
- The right to rectify inaccuracies.
- The right to erase data (under certain circumstances).
- The right to object to processing for specific purposes, including direct marketing.
- Consent: Organizations are required to obtain explicit and informed consent from individuals before processing personal data. This consent must be freely given, specific and revocable at any time. Individuals must be able to withdraw their consent without facing any adverse consequences, and do so as easily as consent was initially given.
- Purpose Limitation: Personal data can only be collected for specific, explicit and legitimate purposes. Data controllers are prohibited from using data for purposes different from the original reason given for collection. This principle aims to prevent the misuse of personal information following data collection.
- Data Minimization: Data controllers must collect only the minimum amount of data necessary to achieve the intended purpose. This minimization principle is designed to reduce the risks associated with excessive data collection, accounting for scenarios in which a breach does occur.
- Data Security: Data controllers and processors are obligated to implement robust security measures to protect personal data from breaches and unauthorized access. This includes encryption, access controls and regular security assessments.
- Data Transfers: International transfers are regulated by the requirement that an adequate level of data protection must be provided by all data processors when transferring information to countries outside of Chile. This aligns with global efforts to safeguard privacy across borders.
- Data Protection Officer (DPO): Certain larger organizations are required to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) responsible for ensuring compliance with the PDPL. The DPO serves as a point of contact for individuals and supervisory authorities and plays a crucial role in monitoring data protection practices.
- Accountability and Record-Keeping: To demonstrate compliance, data controllers must maintain records of their data processing activities. This accountability measure helps ensure transparency and facilitates regulatory oversight.
- Enforcement and Penalties: The Agency for the Protection of Personal Data was created to serve as the regulatory authority responsible for enforcing these data privacy provisions. Violations can result in substantial fines, administrative sanctions and other penalties, compelling businesses to make compliance a top priority.
By establishing an oversight agency, Chile enables individuals to seek legal action if any of the rights outlined above are violated. Chilean residents can file complaints directly to the agency, which has the authority to investigate and impose sanctions on organizations that fail to comply with the law.
Guide your business to compliance
For businesses operating in Chile, compliance with the PDPL is both a legal obligation and a strategic imperative. Failure to adhere to the law can result in significant financial penalties, damage to reputation, and loss of customer trust. At the same time, going above and beyond to respect privacy rights and clearly communicate information processing requests, when paired with effective data management and protection, increases brand loyalty and consumer trust. For any business, it’s easy to see the value captured by exemplary data privacy practices.
Therefore, it is essential that organizations implement the following processes and procedures:
- Data Mapping and Inventory: Identify all personal data collected, processed, and stored by the organization.
- Consent Mechanisms: Review and update consent mechanisms to ensure they meet the requirement for explicit and informed consent.
- Security Measures: Implement robust data security measures to protect against data breaches and unauthorized access.
- Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs): Conduct DPIAs regularly to assess and mitigate risk.
- Data Transfer Mechanisms: Establish data transfer mechanisms that comply with all international data transfer provisions.
- Data Protection Officer (DPO): Appoint a qualified Data Protection Officer, if required.
- Records Management: Maintain detailed records of data processing activities to demonstrate compliance at any time.
Compliance with the PDPL is mandatory for any organization collecting or processing the personal data of Chilean residents. Understanding and adhering to the law’s principles by obtaining consent, securing data and respecting individuals’ rights are essential steps to ensure compliance and avoid legal repercussions. For serious infringements, fines can total up to $600,000 or 4% of the previous year global income, whichever is higher. These are notably steep, and can cripple an organization.
Instead, make compliance a priority. Doing so not only protects individuals’ privacy, but preserves a company’s reputation and trustworthiness in the eyes of consumers and regulators to lay the groundwork for long term success.
Why Privacy Bee is necessary
Although Chile implemented the PDPL to grant consumers the right to protect their personal data and hold businesses who misuse and abuse it accountable, the onus still clearly falls on the individual to protect their information. For a business, that means you’re in charge of protecting all employees from social engineering attacks, especially today as artificial intelligence (AI) enables threat actors to launch more sophisticated attacks at scale.
100% of businesses who experience a data breach have cybersecurity measures in place already. That’s a given today. But what many companies miss is the external piece of data protection, which significantly reduces the organization’s attack surface. External Data Privacy is the key to this, yet only a handful of companies are ahead of the curve.
The task of removing personal data becomes massive when applied across an entire organization, rendering it practically impossible for a single person or small team to manage it all without outside professional help. Nevertheless, the identification and subsequent elimination of this data play a pivotal role in deterring cybercriminals. This is where Privacy Bee emerges as the optimal solution, simplifying the time-consuming process of monitoring and eradicating employee personal data for business leaders. It’s especially effective for executives who are highly visible to the general public.
Privacy Bee minimizes the proliferation of your organization’s personal data across the vast digital landscape, and extends its protective umbrella to vendors, helping you ensure 3rd party partners do not serve as the weak link in your security defenses. If you are already conducting vendor risk assessments and surveys, kudos to you! However, it is still essential to recognize that a vendor is the single most susceptible party for a breach, which you don’t want to bleed into your organization.
As the billion-dollar surveillance industry continues to grow, Data Brokers and People Search Sites have assumed pivotal roles, reaping record-breaking profits by trading your employee and customer information with uncontrollable entities. A solitary data breach can lead to a loss in productivity, expensive remediation efforts, and recurring breach incidents—a predicament that plagues the vast majority of businesses following their first breach. The initial vulnerability sets off a chain reaction that not only inflicts short-term damage on your bottom line but also erodes brand value and customer trust over time. There are ripple effects to consider, such as heightened employee turnover due to poaching and a substantial decline in productivity due to more sophisticated spam outreach that can be distracting and downright dangerous.
Privacy Bee combats external threat actors lurking beyond your organization’s perimeters. By meticulously pinpointing every nook and cranny of the internet where your data resides and swiftly purging it, Privacy Bee closes the data security gap. The service even encompasses dark web monitoring and provides timely data breach notifications if another company falls victim to an exploitation incident and potentially exposes your information in the process.
Our unwavering commitment is deeply rooted in the belief that privacy is an inalienable human right that transcends political discourse and negotiations. This is why Privacy Bee vigilantly monitors user data for security vulnerabilities while holding the surveillance industry accountable. We compel Data Brokers, People Search Sites, and more than 150,000 additional websites to expunge your stored data and opt out of further data collection.
Privacy Bee’s protective umbrella extends over a wide range of potential threats, including:
- Data breaches
- Spam emails
- Telemarketing calls
- Cyberstalking
- Swatting
- Doxxing
- Blackmail
- Identity theft
If you’re a business leader committed to fighting back against threat actors, Privacy Bee empowers you to take control of your most vital employee and customer data. In an era where privacy is critical, Privacy Bee stands as your dedicated partner in the ongoing battle to preserve personal and organizational integrity.
