A tenant (defendant) – Court Ruling (Austria, 2020)

The defendant had lodged a complaint with the DPA, claiming that the plaintiff, a property management organization, had disclosed their data to a third party without consent or any other legal basis. Originally, the defendant had sent an email from his professional mailbox to the plaintiff about a piece of furniture placed in a common area of a property managed by them. Following this, the plaintiff got in touch with the landlord of the property on the matter, who in turn asked if he could get the contact details of the defendant in order to discuss the matter directly with him. For this purpose, the plaintiff forwarded the email message of the defendant - including his professional email address - to the landlord. The defendant argued in its complaint before the DPA, that he had not been consulted prior to the data disclosure to the landlord and that he had been violated in his right to confidentiality, especially with regard to his professional contact details. The DPA granted the defendant’s complaint and found that the personal data, which was indicative of the defendant’s professional activity, should not have been disclosed by the plaintiff to a third party. The plaintiff appealed this decision arguing that, by forwarding the email and all data of the defendant it contained, they were only fulfilling their legal obligation pursuant to the national housing property law to disclose the contact details of a tenant at the request of a landlord. Does the disclosure of the professional email address of a tenant to a landlord constitute a violation of the tenant’s confidentiality? The Federal Administrative Court of Austria confirmed the Data Protection Authority’s decision by reminding the plaintiff that they could have had established contact between the parties involved in other ways, e.g. by referring to the postal address of the tenant, and that the disclosure of the professional email address could not be reconciled with the principle of data minimisati