In the decision of December 5, 2018, GZ: DSBD123.211/0004-DSB/2018, the data protection authority had to clarify, in the course of a complaint procedure, the question of whether the complainant’s rights to confidentiality and deletion were thereby violated because the respondent did not comply with the complainant’s partial deletion request. In addition, the question had to be clarified whether the refusal to restore data violated the complainant’s right to rectification. In this regard, the data protection authority stated that in the case of a request-related right, such as the right to erasure (in the case at hand, the old legal situation was applicable, i.e., Section 27 (1) (2) of the Austrian Data Protection Act 2000), the data subject must be free to request the erasure of only part of the data as a “minus” (partial right to erasure). If a client/responsible party is of the opinion that a partial deletion request cannot be complied with, the relevant reasons for this must be communicated to the data subject – within the period provided for this purpose – in such a way that the data subject himself and also the data protection authority can understand why the request was not (fully) complied with. The data protection authority pronounced that the respondent’s approach of deleting the entire personal data of the complainant – despite partial deletion request – does not correspond to the use of data in good faith. The deletion of the entire data set, which is the subject of the proceedings, has permanently impaired the integrity of the data set, which constitutes a violation of the right to secrecy pursuant to Section 1 para. 1 DSG 2000 entails. Furthermore, the complainant was also deprived of his right to deletion pursuant to Section 1 (1) of the German Data Protection Act by the excessive deletion. 3 Z 2 iVm § 27 DSG 2000 violated. Finally, with regard to the right to rectification, the data protection authority stated that due to the – undisputed – complete deletion of the complainant’s data, rectification (even by means of an additional declaration) or restoration of the same is not possible by its very nature, because the factual existence of a data record to be rectified is a prerequisite for rectification. Consequently, the complaint was to be dismissed on this point and no performance order was to be issued. The decision is not legally binding.