Processing Purposes

Processing refers to any action using someone’s personal data. This begins when you start collecting information about someone, and continues until you no longer need the information and it’s been securely destroyed or irreversibly de-identified (i.e. anonymized). If you hold information on someone, even if you did not collect it directly from them or do anything else with the data, it counts as processing.

Categorizing Processing Purposes

What do you intend to accomplish at the business level? Is there a core purpose that you can identify? Other related purposes? Unrelated ones?

This is tied to your obligations to be transparent and fair with your collection and use of the data you collect.

If data is collected for one reason but is used for another, this can raise privacy concerns. This is one of the reasons for regularly reviewing your privacy notices against your actual data uses. For example, if you intend to use collected data for order fulfilment only, but someone within your organization decides to sell this data to a marketing data company, order fulfilment is the primary purpose and data selling is the secondary purpose.

List of Processing Purposes

Processing Purpose	Description
Access Provisioning & Management	User account provisioning, management and de-provisioning.
Automated Decision Making	Machine-based decisions concerning individuals.
Backup & Archiving	Data stored to ensure its availability for recovery.
Benchmarking & Reporting	Measurements comparing the methods, performance and positions of an organization against internal or external standards.
Consent & Preference Management	Collecting and managing permissions and choices provided by individuals.
Content & Knowledge Management	Creating, curating and sharing information such as wikis, learning experiences, news, media, or social posts.
Correspondence	Communicating directly with individuals, including to respond to their inquiries and complaints.
Customer Relationship Management	Maintaining business relationships and databases.
Customer Support	Providing technical, administrative, operational or other kinds of support.
Data Storage & Access	Storing and accessing information on a storage system, browser or device.
Direct Marketing	Delivering audience-based or personalized marketing that may be based on an individual's demographics, preferences, interests or other characteristics.
Personalization	Improving or tailoring an individual's user experience or the content they receive or interact with.
Event Registration & Management	Hosting and administering in-person or virtual events.
Finance & Accounting	Record keeping related to financing, invoicing, payment collections and remittance, and related activities.
Fraud Prevention	Detecting and preventing fraudulent activity.
Human Resource Administration	Maintaining employee relationships, data, benefits and HR information systems.
Job Application Management	Talent acquisition and hiring process management.
Law Enforcement & National Security	Responding to lawful requests from law enforcement and other government agencies.
Legal Obligations & Compliance	Fulfilling legal obligations and protecting legal rights, terms, positions and claims.
Loyalty Program Administration	Administering program participation, rewards and redemptions.
Measurement & Analytics	Measuring the performance and effectiveness of content, products, service and promotions.
Payment Processing	Sending, receiving and processing payments.
Profiling	Aggregating and analyzing an individual's preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes.
Research	Archiving or analytics for scientific, historic or statistical purposes.
Sales & Demand Generation	Business lead and demand generation, outreach and related record keeping.
Security Management	Ensuring the security, confidentiality and availability of system and data.
Selling & Monetizing Data	Transferring or exchanging data for monetary or other valuable considerations.
Service Delivery & Fulfillment	Delivering products or services in accordance with contractual agreements and terms of service.
Service Management & Improvement	Managing or improving the performance and value of systems, products or services.
Targeted Advertising	Serving advertising tailored to an individual's preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes.
Tracking	Monitoring the behaviors, interactions and movements of an individual.
Other	Custom purposes directed by DataGrail Customers.