Where a website operator embeds a social plugin that causes a visitor's browser to request content from the plugin provider and transmit the visitor's personal data to that provider, any consent required under Articles 2(h) and 7(a) of Directive 95/46 must be obtained by the operator only for the processing operations for which it determines the purposes and means. In the same situation, the duty to inform under Article 10 of Directive 95/46 also falls on the operator, but only as regards the processing operations for which it actually determines the purposes and means.

The collection of personal data by members of a religious community in the course of door-to-door preaching, and the subsequent processing of those data, is not processing for the purposes of the activities referred to in Article 3(2), first indent, of Directive 95/46. It is also not processing carried out by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity within the meaning of Article 3(2), second indent, of that directive.

A religious community may be a controller, jointly with its members who engage in preaching, for personal-data processing carried out by those members in the context of door-to-door preaching organised, coordinated and encouraged by that community. That is so even if the community does not have access to the data and even if it has not given its members written guidelines or instructions on the processing.

Articles 10, 11 and 13 of Directive 95/46 preclude national measures that allow one public administrative body of a Member State to transfer personal data to another public administrative body, and allow the receiving body then to process that data, without informing the data subjects of the transfer or the processing.

Directive 95/46 does not, by itself, create a restriction that conflicts with freedom of expression or with other freedoms and rights applicable in the European Union, including those protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. National authorities and courts applying the national rules that implement Directive 95/46 must ensure a fair balance between the rights and interests concerned, including the fundamental rights protected by EU law.