There have been a lot of changes in privacy policies in the past few months. Companies are silently updating terms, rewriting contracts, and bringing out new personal data tools as a result of the huge legal shift that’s about to be made.
This legal measure is called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) meant to reshape the nasty areas of the internet.
The GDPR was passed by the EU in 2016, setting rules on how personal data is shared and managed by companies. It was only meant to cover citizens of the EU but because of the universal nature of the internet, every online service is affected.
The GDPR has two measures, one of which is setting a high bar for obtaining personal data and secondly, the penalties for breaking the rules are severe (maximum fines per violation is 4% of the companies turnover or $20 million). The rules will be operational on the 25th of May, 2018.
As a result there will be changes in Terms of service and other warnings. More so, there will be opportunity for you to download all the data a company has on you. You can also transfer this data between networks. The GDPR adds composite new requirements for companies that get user data second-hand bringing about more transparency on the part of the company.
It’s hard to say if this measure will make data collection more prying or if there will be aggressive implementation of the regulators, but, one thing is certain and that is that breaches will get more expensive and that cost will spread throughout the network. Also, it will be more difficult to make data collection invasive. A lot of the internet is based on sharing of user data. A lot of people have for a long time assumed that user data will be easily shared across networks but the GDPR is out to stop that possibility. Now, the NSA and political firms like Cambridge Analytica won’t be able to mess with any data for any reason whatsoever.
