Chamber of Commerce will finally shield entrepreneurs' phone numbers to prevent abuse

The telephone numbers belonging to entrepreneurs will be shielded in the national business registry from the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK) in order to prevent abuse, and to improve privacy. The organization will make the change from Wednesday at the request of the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

"With this, we are combating the unwanted solicitation of entrepreneurs by telephone via their registration in the Trade Register," said KvK Board Chair Greet Prins. "I am pleased that we can now realize this shielding, and it appears to be necessary. Self-employed persons in particular are still being harassed by telephone salespeople, despite the law from 2021 that completely prohibits unsolicited telephone sales."

With this measure, the KvK claims to be anticipating changes in the Trade Register Act that are being implemented because the public nature of the registry is being abused. For example, the ability to protect the addresses of entrepreneurs was previously expanded to counter threats. This year, the KvK is also removing fax machine numbers from the Trade Register.

To prevent unsolicited sales calls, the telephone numbers of self-employed persons and other sole proprietorships were already removed from the Chamber of Commerce's online address database in 2018, but a change in the law was necessary to protect them further.

Minister Dirk Beljaarts of Economic Affairs said that "a modern and future-proof Trade Register" requires two specific factors. "On the one hand, openness and transparency, because as an entrepreneur and consumer you need to know with whom you are doing business. And on the other hand, privacy, to protect the personal privacy of every entrepreneur as best as possible," Beljaarts wrote.

"This new measure fits in seamlessly with the latter."