Can a private investigator follow me?

An investigator processing your data (following, photographing, background research) is a controller under the GDPR — no badge exempts them. The lawful lane: most countries license the trade; the classic mandates — insurance-fraud verification, employee misconduct on concrete suspicion, debtor tracing, matrimonial cases where national law tolerates them — run on legitimate interest, and the balancing test does real work: observation in public, proportionate in duration and intensity, documented. The insurer having you observed over a disputed claim is the textbook accepted case — bounded, incident-related. Never lawful, licence or not: entering private property, planting trackers on your car (jurisprudence across Europe treats covert GPS by private parties as over the line, often criminal), bugging conversations, hacking accounts, pretexting your bank, or filming into your home. Your rights against a PI and their client: Art. 15 access — investigators may delay disclosure while an investigation would be compromised, but not forever; afterwards you can see the file, and the report about you at the client (insurer, employer) is fully access-requestable. Unlawfully obtained material backfires: courts exclude it or sanction its gatherers, and DPAs fine both PI and instructing client. Suspect you’re being followed unlawfully? Document sightings, then complain to the DPA and the licensing authority — and if it’s an ex behind it, treat it as the stalking pattern it is.