Financial

What happens in your bank account gives a full insight into who you are. Your financial data is the subject of great interest, not only from advertising companies and other companies that want to monetise your personal data.

The Dutch and European governments have instructed financial institutions to monitor all your financial transactions in detail and report 'unusual transactions' on your account to the authorities as part of the fight against crime. It is already apparent that all sorts of things are going wrong around financial personal data. For instance, an innocent transaction can be flagged as 'suspicious' and people can be unfairly restricted from making payments.

These same governments believe that through 'open banking' and access to your financial transaction data, innovation would be possible. Open banking allows companies to combine financial personal data with data from other sources and analyse it with algorithms; thus profiling every citizen. The door is opened to unbridled dissemination of personal data, while supervision and enforcement of the AVG is lacking, partly because the Personal Data Authority is underfunded and understaffed.

There are many developments in the field of financial privacy that need to be followed with attention, think of the digital euro, the Banking Data Referral Portal, the future of credit registration and the data trade in anti-money laundering data. Read about financial privacy our introductory article.

Privacy First advocates for your financial privacy. We want you to be able to act in freedom, independent of the government and financial institutions. Access to your financial personal data should only take place when there is an urgent and substantiated need for it, with strict monitoring of compliance with fundamental rights and with adult low-threshold legal protection.