Glossary
Privacy and data-rights terms, explained
Clear, jargon-free definitions of the terms you meet when you look at your own digital footprint and exercise your data rights.
- Data Subject Access Request (DSAR)
- Your right to ask an organisation for a copy of the personal data it holds about you.
- GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
- The UK data-protection law that gives individuals rights over their personal data.
- Personal data
- Any information that relates to an identified or identifiable person.
- Data broker
- A company that collects and sells personal information about people.
- Right to erasure
- Your right to ask an organisation to delete personal data it holds about you, in certain circumstances.
- Online identifier
- A piece of data — like an IP address or device ID — that can single you out online.
- Right to be forgotten
- The everyday name for the right to erasure under UK GDPR — the same right, not a separate one.
- Consent
- A freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous agreement to a particular use of your personal data.
- Data controller
- The organisation that decides why and how your personal data is processed.
- Data protection regulator
- The public authority that oversees data-protection law and handles complaints; in the UK this is the ICO.