What Is This GDPR All About?
As a regular person, you are probably getting lots of email from companies you know - or don't know - telling you they updated their Privacy Policy, or are asking you to opt-in to continue following their newsletters.
As a business owner, you are probably getting email alerts from companies you pay services for or use to run your business, such as MailChimp, Squarespace, Typepad, Google Analytics, Recurly, PayPal, MindBody, and many others.
A huge law was created in the EU back in 2016 that demands major protections for people from companies who collect their personal information on the Internet and use it in some way. That law gave everyone 2 years to comply, and the Big Day of Compliance starts tomorrow, Friday, May 25, 2018. Even though it was created for people in the EU, it applies to businesses everywhere who may have clients or readers in the EU. Plus, laws like this tend to be mimicked later on by other countries years later, like the US.
Where Should You Start?
Maybe you have started complying already. If you work at a large company with a legal department and IT team, you have probably been at this for two years. If you're an attorney, you're probably well versed in what different companies need to do to be in compliance.
If you're neither of those, you're going to need to start reading, and we have a few recommendations for you. Businesses who need to pay close attention to this are those who do things like:
- Accept money over the internet.
- Collect email addresses into a list or lists and then email those lists.
- Move an email list from one place to another, like from a shopping cart to a newsletter program.
- Target people by using a 3rd party Internet program that "profiles" people by watching their behavior on your website or newsletters, and reporting back on what readers or customers did or didn't do, and how you can market to them in a most exact way.
- Use marketing tools like "pixels" from other websites like Facebook or Google Analytics to better understand what people are doing on your website, or to re-market to them.
- And lots of other things. These are only a few.
Start at the Very Beginning
We like to start at the very beginning. With the actual law. You can find that here (thanks goes to my cousin Will Hellmuth who is an attorney with Davis Write and Tremaine LLP who sent this link:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32016R0679
That firm wrote a great guide that gives a helpful overview of GDPR prep:
"Time To Update Your Privacy Policy for GDPR"
MailChimp, who many of you use for sending newsletters, has also provided helpful information from their legal counsel:
"New MailChimp Tools to Help With GDPR"
Listen to the Articles!
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