Personally Identifiable Information

Personally identifiable information or PII for short refers to any information that can be used, either alone or together with other information, to identify a person.

Some countries or states place particular protections on such data, such as via the European Union’s General Data Protection Rules¹ or the California Consumer Privacy Act².

Unfortunately, not all legislations have such specific laws – however, as the right to privacy is one right codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights³, which many nations ratified (in the EU, also Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms⁴ applies), in theory all those nations should offer some protection for PII. Unfortunately, that theory is not necessarily well reflected in reality.