Your Personal Data Rights in Costa Rica (Ley 8968 and PRODHAB)

The Law on Protection of the Person regarding the Processing of Personal Data (Ley N.º 8968, from 2011) protects the right to "informative self-determination" (Artículo 4): that every individual can control who has their personal data, what it is used for, and can correct it or request that it be deleted. It applies to any company, institution, or database—public or private—that handles personal data in Costa Rica.

Your specific rights (Artículo 7)—and all of them are **free**:

• **Access**: request that whoever holds your data confirm whether they have it, why they collected it, and how they have used it—with a clear explanation, without unexplained technical codes.
• **Rectification**: correct incomplete or inaccurate data.
• **Cancellation/deletion**: request the deletion of your data when it was processed in violation of the law (for example, without your authorization).
• **Opposition**: object to your data being transferred to third parties.

**Response deadline**: the database administrator must resolve your request within **5 business days** of receiving it. If the data subject has passed away, these rights can be exercised by their successors or heirs.

Exceptions (Artículo 8)—these rights may be reasonably limited when state security, crime investigation, statistical or scientific research databases with no risk of identifying individuals, or the provision of public services are involved.

Who enforces compliance—PRODHAB (Artículos 15-16): the Agencia de Protección de Datos de los Habitantes (PRODHAB) is the entity, attached to the Ministerio de Justicia y Paz, responsible for monitoring compliance with this law in both private companies and public institutions, maintaining the registry of regulated databases, and requiring information from database administrators to verify compliance with the law.

Note: if a company or institution does not respond to you within the timeframe or refuses to correct/delete your data without a valid reason from the exceptions above, the formal complaint is filed with PRODHAB. For the exact complaint procedure, confirm on the official PRODHAB website before starting the process.