Privacy policy updated by world+dog, GDPR?

With the imminent introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation, which comes into force across Europe on Friday, 25 May 2018, many are struggling to understand what this means in practice. Here, Will Earp, Digital Experience Manager at the South West Grid for Learning (one of the partner organisations in the UK Safer Internet Centre (SIC)), takes a look at the rush for many online service providers to update their privacy policies.

Date 2018-05-24 Author UK Safer Internet Centre
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It may seem that everyone has suddenly decided to update their privacy policy in the month of May; this is because most organisations are preparing for the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into force on 25 May 2018.

The GDPR tightens regulation around how the personal data of EU citizens is processed, and gives them more rights over who has their data and how they use it.

You can read more about what the GDPR is here, but suffice to say, we all now need to be very clear on why we hold data, and what we are and are not supposed to do with it (and of course the audit trail around this).

Yay, you updated your privacy policy … well done?
Receiving more emails that normal? Does another company want to let you know about the great work they have done on their privacy policy? Let's find out what's going on!

As the digital age has taken hold, we have all been gathering wads of data, and after you have finished using it, well you just leave it there, I mean it was only 100MB of data, which at current prices costs about £ 0.0035 to store.

Unfortunately many companies have often not thought about how long they should keep this data for, and may not have fully considered why they collected it in the first place, or indeed what the data subject agreed could be done with the data. And of course some companies have abused the data they hold by using it for purposes that were not originally agreed when the data was collected, such as selling it to third parties.

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To read the full article, which goes on to discuss issues around compliance and consent in more detail, please visit the SWGfL website.

Find out more about the work of the UK Safer Internet Centre (SIC), including its awareness raising, helpline, hotline and youth participation services.

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