The Privacy Law does not define the concept of direct marketing. European legislation describes the concept as follows: "(…) all activities which make it possible to offer goods or services or to transmit any other messages to a segment of the population by post, telephone or other direct means aimed at informing or soliciting a response from the data subject as well as any service ancillary thereto".

In other words, this is a very broad concept. Also included in the definition: list brokerage, data warehouses, personalized commercial messages, non-commercial messages of associations (e.g. charity), political propaganda,...