FDPIC ruling against Inkasso-Team AG
In its decision of 28 April 2025, the FDPIC concluded its investigation into a debt collection agency that published personal data of alleged debtors on a website. The company was ordered to delete the disproportionate publications from its website. It has lodged an appeal against the decision.
Inkasso-Team AG, a Swiss debt collection company, operates a website on which it publishes detailed information about alleged debtors, including their names. The aim of the publication is, on the one hand, to determine the whereabouts of debtors through information provided by the public. On the other hand, it is intended to warn third parties about these individuals.
In September 2024, the FDPIC opened an investigation against Inkasso-Team AG based on Art. 49 ff of the Data Protection Act. It examined whether the publication of personal data on the website complied with data protection requirements. The investigation found that Inkasso-Team AG had violated the principles of Art. 6 of the Data Protection Act by publishing the data. In particular, the principles of transparency and proportionality were disregarded. Inkasso-Team AG cannot invoke any of the grounds for justification set out in Art. 31 DSG for the disclosure of the data, as neither the consent of the data subjects nor an overriding private or public interest in the disclosure exists.
The FDPIC therefore considered the disclosure to be contrary to data protection law and, in its decision of 28 April 2025, ordered that the publication of the personal data of alleged debtors on the internet be discontinued and that data already published be deleted.
The decision was appealed to the Federal Administrative Court and is not yet final.