Applying for or cancelling a non-disclosure for personal safety reasons

You can apply for a non-disclosure for personal safety reasons to the Digital and Population Data Services Agency.

For us to be able to assess the threat and its likelihood, you must enclose documents proving the threat. Such documents include reports of offences, court decisions or, if you are applying for a non-disclosure for personal safety reasons because of your profession, your employer’s account of the threat targeted at you because of your profession.

In most cases, the documents submitted with the application include reports on offences, court records or, if a person applies for a non-disclosure for personal safety, because of their profession, the application should include their employer’s account of the threat targeted at the person.

The applications are processed without delay. The process may be delayed if further clarifications need to be requested. It is important that you justify the application well and enclose the documents proving the threat.

The contact address remains your public address in the Population Information System. The contact address cannot be your home address and it should not reveal where you live. For example, people have used a PO Box either in their municipality of residence or in another city as a contact address.

The Digital and Population Data Services Agency does not deliver any post.

A non-disclosure for personal safety reasons is used to hide the entry concerning the person's address and municipality of residence in the Population Information System used by the authorities. It prevents these details from being disclosed to private parties that would otherwise have access to them. As a result, the entry concerning the municipality of residence and the address cannot be seen, for example, in the systems of hospitals, cities, banks and insurance companies. This will naturally cause situations in which certain services cannot be provided as quickly and flexibly as normally. In some cases, you cannot use the service at all.

A non-disclosure for personal security reasons must be cancelled in writing. No justifications for cancelling it are required.

At the fastest, a non-disclosure for personal safety reasons is removed within a few days from when the details of the non-disclosure are removed from the system. However, this varies and sometimes the notification left from the non-disclosure may affect your use of services even years later.

The non-disclosure for personal safety reasons only applies to the Population Information System and does not prevent your address details from being shown in some other register. At least your phone operator and the postal services must be notified of a secret address.

If your address does not change after a non-disclosure for personal safety has been granted, it is possible that your address details are still in the registers of different companies in spite of the non-disclosure. After the non-disclosure has been granted, you have to be extremely careful not to give your address to different companies to prevent it from ending up in their registers.

Even if you have been granted a non-disclosure for personal safety reasons, the authorities have the right to obtain your address details for carrying out statutory duties.