Since the end of may this year the GDPR is effective, the GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation and is a 'renewed' regulation concerning all European citizen. With that everybody and every company have to conform to this regulation if the (in any way) process data of European citizen.
Which data are we talking about
We are talking about all the data from which you can 'extract' or point to a natural person. So for instance:
- Personal data like name, adress, telephone number
- Data like IP adresses (the can lead to a person), license plates of a car (they are registred to a person)
Why this regulation?
The world is getting more and more digital and data is more commodity to share and collect. Therefore it is getting much easier for companies to collect a lot (too much) data just to being able to use it for (perhaps) purposes you never gave permission to. To keep privacy in mind and to be able to control the data you are sharing with companies (because it is your property) this regulation is introduced for the complete European Union.
Who has to follow this regulation?
Anybody or every company doing business with companies which hold European citizen data. So every webshop (regardless of its place), every shop, every organization using and storing data.
And if they don't?
Penalties are huge. For violating the regulation companies can receive fines varying from € 10.000.000 to € 20.000.000 or a percentage of theire yearly revenue (what ever is higer). So that is serious money.
Which rights do citizen have according to the GDPR
For consumers there are some additional rights about their data:
- The right to be forgotten, in some situations you can ask a data processor to remove all (non relevant) personal data. A company must cooperate and have to proof that your data is really removes.
- Data portability, A company has to cooperate if you want to transfer your data to another company. For instance if you switch from insurance company. Again they have to proof to you they did..
- The right to rectify, if data isn't correct a consumer can demand to correct this data.
- The right to know which data is kept, a consumer can demand from a company to show which data they collect and with what reason.
So the GDPR is going to help European citizen to control the way their data is stored, who stores their data and which data.
I personally think it is a good step ahead, but I have already noticed that orgzanizations aren't ready for this regulation, even while they know it was comming already for two years. It seems that after the effectiveness they instantly are trying to get things in line, but it is not only following the rules. It is also designing processes within your organization to be able to follow the rules and to be able to 'show' you're in control and compliant.. That said, I think we will be hearing much more about companies that still aren't able to comply.... The first fines will be soon I think....
Have a great sunny day
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