Technical Stuff > Cellphones, communication in general

General Data Protection Regulations - Will this affect you?

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Peter:
EU Data Protection Changes effective May 25 2018

These “updates to personal data permissions” (my words) notices that Yahoo, Twitter and others have been floating online lately, and have been the subject of discussions on another of Don’s “Living in the Philippines” sites, are due to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations which will be effective on May 25 2018.

I've been doing a little bit of research on this one, mainly from the UK’s Information Commisioners Office < https://ico.org.uk  > and the EU’s Article 29 Working Party (links from the ICO site) so the following may explain why the likes of those above have started to send out the "Sign up on our terms or eff off!" notices.

In 2016 after a series of personal data leaks by internet and corporate entities, the EU Parliament tasked their Information Commissioners to formulate, and put into effect, new regulations on how organisations hold personal data. The result was the “General Data Protection Regulations” with the start date of May 25, 2018.

These regulations require that any data collected, must be with the explicit permission of the “data owner”. They also must let the “data owner” (you, me) when requested, know what information is held on him/her. It also covers non-EU citizens who are resident in the EU. eg. A Canadian living in Germany, will have the same rights to know what data is held on him/her, as would a German national. It appears not to cover EU nationals not resident in the EU, unless the “data owner” is still registered with a EU profile. I have a yahoo.co.uk profile and I got a “renewal notice” on that account, even though I am resident in the Philippines.

Taken from the (UK) ICO website at < https://tinyurl.com/ybd4gkwn  >

< .The GDPR applies to processing carried out by organisations operating within the EU. It also applies to organisations outside the EU that offer goods or services to individuals in the EU.  >

What this means is any company/organisation/entity, no matter where they are located, which has clients in an EU country, will be bound by the EU regs. Think of Amazon, Ford USA, a Cancun dive shop, the “Australian” newspaper subscription department, the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, Facebook, even my SF and Veterans’ group sites and offline databases are affected. In fact, any entity which collects and stores any type of personal data and you can see who this will affect. (There are exemptions for law enforcement data collection and exchanges over national borders.)
As to why some got them from yaboo and others didn’t, may be because they can't figure out who is in the EU and who is not, as <at yahoo.com> could be resident anywhere.

Those with an email address of: < at yahoo.com.ph> should be in the Philippines., : < at yahoo.com.om > would be in Oman, etc. etc., and may not be asked to “renew” their permissions, but with the ease of travel and the use of VPNs or IP blockers, who knows where anyone is at one moment in time?

All IMHO of course.  8)

Peter

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