The duty to blur: what builders need to know

„Blurring“ sounds technical, but legally it is your most important shield. The GDPR requires that personal data is not stored longer than necessary. For time-lapse footage intended for marketing, faces and number plates are never necessary – and must therefore not end up in the archive unblurred in the first place.

Manual vs. automatic: a risk comparison

In the past, videos were often blurred manually in the editing room. The problem: the raw data sat unblurred on servers for weeks. A data breach in that phase would be catastrophic. Today, real-time anonymisation is the standard. Specialised camera systems use edge computing or cloud AI to analyse image content instantly.

• Faces: are detected and irreversibly blurred.
• Licence plates: are made unreadable.
• Surroundings: the neighbour's garden is statically masked out (privacy masking).

The benefit for your marketing

The pleasant side effect of the duty to blur: you can share your time-lapse videos with peace of mind. Whether on LinkedIn, your company website or in presentations – since no personality rights are infringed, you don't need individual consent forms from every tradesperson who happened to walk through the frame.

Conclusion

Don't skimp on the software. A „dumb“ camera is cheap to buy, but can get expensive when the data protection authority comes knocking. Invest in systems that handle the blurring automatically.