What's with all the Privacy Policy updates?

Has your inbox been flooded with emails notifying you of Privacy Policy updates? You’ve probably seen a lot on the apps you use too. This past week there have been messages from Etsy, Instagram and LinkedIn just to name a few. So why is everyone updating their privacy policies all at once? Does this have to do with the data breach at Facebook? Actually, no – it all has to do with Europe. There is a new law in the EU that goes into effect on May 25th called the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR for short. The law actually passed two years ago and companies have had those two years to prepare for it. 

GDPR is a huge overhaul of web privacy which is laid out in a massive 261 page document. If you’re really interested, you can read it here.

Not interested in reading the whole document? Well, in short, the law has to do with the way that companies are collecting and using data about people online. It requires that businesses protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens and EU citizens have the right to clearly and explicitly opt into having their data collected and used by a company on the internet. The photos in this article are srcreenshots of what I received from Google announcing how they are rolling out their new privacy policy and how they plan on keeping their users informed.

This law doesn’t just apply to EU companies, it applies to any company with users in Europe.

So what happens if companies are not following this law? There are fines and the fines can be large (especially in Germany and Spain).

Is your website ready for the EU GDPR law? Not sure?

Contact us and we’d be glad to take a look at your site and let you know how we can help.