Module 79: Privacy and Data Protection
Purpose and consent
🏠The everyday picture
A tailor takes your measurements to stitch your shirt. You'd be upset to find them shared with a gym that then phones you with offers. You gave them for one purpose.
📘What it really is
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Purpose limitation: collect personal data for a clear, stated purpose, and use it only for that purpose (or closely related ones the person would expect).
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Notice: tell people, in plain language, what you collect, why, who you share it with, how long you keep it, and how they can exercise their rights. This is your privacy notice, shown at the point of collection (the enquiry form), not only buried in a page.
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Consent must be:
- free: not forced by bundling it with unrelated things;
- specific and informed: for clear purposes the person understands;
- unambiguous: an active choice (an unticked box they tick), never a pre-ticked box;
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as easy to withdraw as to give.
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Separate consents for separate purposes: "reply to my enquiry" is different from "send me marketing messages".
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Record consent: what was agreed, when, through which form and notice version. Your audit log (Module 56) can hold this.
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Some processing doesn't need consent under the law because it's necessary for other legitimate reasons (for example, keeping invoices required by tax law). Know which basis applies to each use.
🖱️Try it
Review your CRM's enquiry form: write a short privacy notice to show beside it, add a separate unticked checkbox for marketing,
and store each consent (purpose, time, notice version) in a consents table. Add a way for a customer's marketing consent to
be withdrawn and check that marketing lists respect it.
✅Quick check
Is a pre-ticked marketing checkbox valid consent?
Show the answer
No. Consent must be an active, clear choice.
Why record which notice version someone consented to?
Show the answer
To prove what the person was told and agreed to, if questions arise later.