What Is It?
The General data Protection Regulation is a data protection law which regulates how the personal data of individuals in the EU is handled by companies and organisations who gather and store personal data, and give greater protection to those individuals. This framework is being revised and the new version will come into action on the 25th May 2018.
Current data protection regulations were composed in the 1990’s, nearly 30 years ago, at a time when social media and the opportunities and threats that it brings, did not exist. The internet itself was really still in its infancy and yet to experience it’s stunning uprising and evolution into the domineering power tool that it is today.
How Might It Affect You?
Individuals
‘Personal data’ covers a fairly broad scope, this could be a photo, email address, name, DOB, you IP address, any number of personal pieces of information.
You’ll likely see the way in which you give consent when signing up to a website for example, change. Currently the act of consent is fairly passive and this will, as of 25th of May, need to be an ‘active affirmative action’.
Removing your consent should also become easier and clear, as the new GDPR will require all organisations to meet these new standards.
Companies
If your organisation stores personal data in anyway, this is going to affect you. You may want to appoint a data professional or data protection officer who can carry your company smoothly through the transition, and is both fully informed and in charge of the GDPR changes and compliance.
According to the EU GDPR website, failure to comply may result in a fine measuring up to 4% of your annual global turnover, however, this is easily avoided as you have just short of a month to get up to speed on the matter!
Who’s Making Changes Already?
You’ll have noticed over the last couple of months, as you sign into accounts and apps that you will be informed of updated or changed privacy settings and information which you must review. Perhaps you’ve been asked to log in again, when usually your browser automatically logs you in, or maybe you’ve been stopped, post password, to see if you’d like to add additional ‘two step’ login for safety. Many of us will be more eager to review those ‘updated privacy settings’ after the recent news headlines, I’m sure.
Facebook, of course, have updated a vast amount of their settings and redesigned much of their user interface for privacy settings.
Twitter have announced their privacy policy updates which will coincide with the GDPR update on the 25th May.
Instagram have recently, as have their parent company, Facebook, introduced a ‘data download’ for users, so that they too may own and see the data that is collected when they use the image editing app.
