Land and mortgage register numbers should not go into the public domain

The President of the Personal Data Protection Office Miroslaw Wroblewski has asked the Minister of Economic Development and Technology to bring the provisions of the Act on Facilitation of Preparation and Implementation of Housing Investments and Associated Investments into line with GDPR.

The issue is the obligation, stipulated therein, to include land and mortgage register numbers in applications for determining the location of investments and in resolutions of the commune council adopted in these matters. In addition, the provisions of the act stipulate the obligation to publish the investor's application and the resolution of the commune council in the Public Information Bulletin and the Voivodeship Official Journal, respectively. In this way, the land and mortgage register numbers of both the property on which the investment will be carried out and other property against which the investment may have effects are made public.

Meanwhile, having the land register number, it is possible to identify a specific individual (including the owner of a specific property) and obtain a lot of information about him or her. This is because land and mortgage registers contain data not only about the property owner's name or personal identification number (PESEL number), but also information about his or her financial obligations or how he obtained title to the property.

Therefore, publishing land and mortgage register numbers can lead to risks for many people. Land and mortgage register data can be used contrary to the original purposes of processing, including unauthorised profiling of property owners or identity theft.

It is worth remembering that the land and mortgage register number, due to the fact that it indirectly identifies an individual (i.e., the owner of the property), constitutes personal data and is subject to the protection provided for in the GDPR.