The plaintiff asserted a data protection right to information claim against the defendant credit agency SCHUFA.
In the course of its operations, the defendant collects and stores personal data that may be relevant for assessing the creditworthiness of data subjects. Furthermore, it generates so-called score values, taking into account, among other things, the data available concerning the respective data subject. A score represents a probability value regarding the future behavior of groups of individuals, calculated based on statistical-mathematical analysis methods. The scores determined by the defendant are intended to indicate the probability with which the data subject will fulfill their contractual obligations. The defendant provides these score values to its contractual partners to enable them to assess the creditworthiness of their customers.
After the plaintiff's car purchase financing initially failed due to incorrect information provided by the defendant, the plaintiff contacted the defendant. The latter subsequently sent her a credit report and, on several occasions, a “data overview according to § 34 Federal Data Protection Act”. The plaintiff is of the opinion that the information provided by the defendant does not meet the legal requirements.
The Local Court largely dismissed the action. The plaintiff's appeal to the Regional Court was unsuccessful.
With her appeal on points of law, admitted by the Regional Court, the plaintiff pursued her request to be provided with information regarding individual score values, specifically which characteristics play a role in the score calculation and with what weighting. The VI Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice, responsible for claims under the Federal Data Protection Act, rejected the appeal on points of law.
However, the defendant must provide information about which personal data, particularly credit-relevant data, are stored by it and have been incorporated into the calculation of the probability values. The defendant provided this information to the plaintiff (partially only in the present proceedings). All data stored by the defendant concerning her person was transmitted to her. Furthermore, she was informed about the probability values transmitted to third parties in the last twelve months and the currently calculated probability values, as well as about the data used for calculating these probability values. The details were explained in an information sheet.
The appellate court rightly denied any further right to information for the plaintiff. The specific details regarding comparison groups claimed by her are not among the elements of the scoring procedure about which information must be provided according to § 34 para. 4 sentence 1 no. 4 BDSG (Federal Data Protection Act). The same applies to the weighting of the characteristics included in the score value. The right to information under § 34 para. 4 BDSG is based on the legislative intent to protect the trade secrets of credit agencies, namely the so-called score formula, despite creating greater transparency in scoring procedures. The obligation to provide information is intended to enable the data subject to understand the factual circumstances that influenced the assessment and to react to them. For this purpose, no information on comparison groups and the weighting of individual elements is required. The legislative goal of a transparent procedure is achieved by ensuring that it is evident to the data subject which specific circumstances served as the basis for calculating the probability value. This goal is achieved by the information provided to the plaintiff.
Judgment of the Federal Court of Justice of January 28, 2014 – VI ZR 156/13
Lower Courts:
Gießen Local Court – Judgment of October 11, 2012 – 47 C 206/12
Gießen Regional Court – Judgment of March 6, 2013 – 1 S 301/12
Source: Press release of the Federal Court of Justice
Goldberg Attorneys at Law 2014
Attorney Michael Ullrich, LL.M. (Information Law)
Specialist Attorney for Information Technology Law
Email: info@goldberg.de
