The European Union, after many years of work, is finally seeing their efforts pay off: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is entering into force May 25th 2018. It has been called the strictest regulation on data protection worldwide and is bound to change the way users’ data are collected and exploited.
But, concretely, what does that mean?
Simply put, users will have more control over what is being collected on them. Their consent will have to be more explicit than before, and companies can no longer refuse access to a website if a user refuses to allow their cookies to be stored. Moreover, the user can ask at any moment for access to the information collected on them and can even choose for that data to be erased (as per their “right to be forgotten”).
Privacy breaches will now have to be reported within 72 hours by the company to the supervising authority, meaning that companies will have to be more transparent. Last but not least, the penalty for not respecting the GDPR can be up to 20 M € or 4% of organization’s annual global turnover, whichever is higher, meaning that companies are more motivated to comply.
This Regulation will apply to all EU organizations and EU citizens. The goal is to enhance privacy in software usage and overall Internet activity.
So students in Multilingual Communication, if you wanted to work for a communications company, be prepared to change the way you target users! This Regulation means that you will no longer be able to use data profiling and algorithms, but you will need to use more creative strategies that will appeal to all kinds of clients.
Still have unanswered questions about the topic? Read this article!
Écrit par Natalia VEZALI