70First of all, it must be borne in mind that ‘personal data’, within the meaning of Article 4(1) of the GDPR, means ‘any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person’, it being understood that, according to the case-law, that definition is applicable where, by reason of its content, purpose and effect, the information in question is linked to a particular person (see, to that effect, judgment of 20 December 2017, Nowak, C‑434/16, EU:C:2017:994, paragraph 35). Furthermore, under Article 4(2) of the GDPR, the concept of ‘processing’ is defined as ‘any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means’ such as, inter alia, ‘consultation’, ‘use’, ‘disclosure by transmission’, ‘dissemination’ or ‘otherwise making available’. Those definitions reflect the aim of the EU legislature to assign a broad scope to those two concepts (see, to that effect, judgments of 20 December 2017, Nowak, C‑434/16, EU:C:2017:994, paragraph 34, and of 24 February 2022, Valsts ieņēmumu dienests (Processing of personal data for tax purposes), C‑175/20, EU:C:2022:124, paragraph 35).
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