When Data Quietly Changes Its Purpose

In this episode of Compliance Technologies, we continue our series on GDPR fines by exploring one of the most subtle and most commonly violated principles in data protection: purpose limitation.

GDPR requires that personal data be collected for explicit, specific, and legitimate purposes, and not quietly reused in ways that are incompatible with the original intent. In practice, many systems change over time, repurposing data for analytics, monitoring, or AI without clear reassessment.

We discuss how purpose change happens, why internal reuse still carries compliance risk, and how modern data pipelines and AI systems amplify the challenge. This episode reframes purpose limitation as a governance and architecture problem, not just a legal or consent issue.

If you build, operate, or oversee systems that process personal data, this conversation will help you see where compliance risk often accumulates even when everything appears to be working.