Possibilities of Protecting Personal Data Published on Social Network Sites in the Light of the Law on Personal Data Protection

Abstract

Aside from being a typical place for everyday activities and social communication, social networks are a unique place where various types of social behaviour and interactions can be observed. The majority of social network users leave a lot of their personal data on their social network accounts as they believe that they will be visible only to their friends and good-willed users, i.e. that they will not be misused or perverted. Unfortunately, misuses of personal data collected by social networking sites are far from being rare. Violation of the right to privacy most often occurs on the most popular social networking sites with the highest number of registered users. The Law on Personal Data Protection of the Republic of Serbia sets out the requirements for personal data collection and processing, as well as the limits for such data collection and database creation, the mechanisms aimed to maintain security of the collected data and the issue of data keeping surveillance. The authors shall attempt to determine whether this law applies to personal data collection on the Internet and whether it can ensure adequate and efficient legal protection of users.