Your Super Powers Of Explicit Consent
GDPR will soon become fully effective and it’s going to shake up a lot of things concerning data gathering and processing. One of the biggest changes is the introduction of the requirement to give explicit consent for such activities.
To shed some light on GDPR we’ll be publishing two blog posts on this topic. In them we’ll break down into simple terms why giving consent is important and how it is employed by the GDPR (don’t worry, we won’t bore you to death). After you finish reading, we hope that you’ll have a better understanding of why consent is needed to process our personal data, how we should give such consent and what the conditions are that indicate that our agreement was obtained in a proper manner.
Remember the words of Bill Gates?
‘’The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.’’
Now, if we follow this statement, it is fair to say we need to prevent any sort of automation when it comes to inefficient, perhaps even illegitimate, operations. Let’s take the above quote and put it in the context of personal data.
Marketing is not the worst of them
To penetrate a market, one needs to gather as much information as possible on how a product or service should be formed to appeal to the public in the best possible manner. You could, of course, go from door to door and ask each individual what they prefer, but that is impractical and time consuming.
With digitalisation, gathering this type of information became an easy and automated task. And with automation came volume, amplified by the needs of expanding global trade seeking new markets and niches. Since our personal data defines and reflects our society, our needs and behaviour, people came up with creative ways of collecting, processing and transferring obtained information. This made it possible for internet moguls to rise and create multiple pools of our data, which spurred many ideas on how and why personal data is being used and manipulated.
We know now that our data is being utilised in rather peculiar ways. And yes, the most annoying ones seem to be marketing campaigns, yet there are numerous other actors out there collecting, processing and using our data, without us even knowing and with much more severe consequences than any commercial has ever had.
Don’t get too comfortable
Even though we normally operate in accordance with Zipf’s Law and the principle of least effort, we cannot and should not all be simply lax and careless when it comes to the abuse of our data.
Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policies no one ever reads
This is exactly where the instrument of gaining an informed and clear consent plays a huge role. But what exactly does it mean to give an informed consent? It means we, data subjects (this is how the GDPR defines subjects that produce data), should first and foremost at least skim the Terms and Conditions, even better, we should go through all Privacy Policies before ticking a box.
It’s safe to admit no one reads those, otherwise Cambridge Analytica would never have created such a big fuss, nor would it be considered news. It’s shocking what hides inside all the paperwork and really off-putting when you find out that it would take 224 hours a year for an individual to read all the privacy policies! Just to put it in another perspective — that means an average of 40 minutes per day.
Whatever takes longer then brushing our teeth is reasonably unacceptable for this fast-paced era. This is why GDPR is, in a way, the Magna Carta of Data. It does bring some revolutionary approaches and quite fascinating solutions.
Your super powers of explicit consent https://blog.datafund.net/your-super-powers-of-explicit-consent-ed39ae5b825e … #datafund #dataprivacy #GDPR #dataprotection #privacy
To name just a few of them — automated data processing cannot have binding effects or legal consequences for data subjects, it introduces the obligation to take into account the state of the art and the concept of data protection by design. In simpler terms, data protection must be included in the design from the first line of code onwards and not just as an afterthought.
In the next blog post we’ll take a look at how GDPR defines the ways of giving consent.
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