Europe is big into protecting the privacy of users who enter their information online (like filling out a form for an appointment, a credit card application, or even signing up for a newsletter). They continually make the laws stronger to protect their citizens from digital evilness (like selling your information without your consent)- much more so than the US. That's why they created the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union (GDPR). And on May 25, 2018, they are going to start enforcing even stricter requirements. It can basically be boiled down to applying the Golden Rule to your privacy policy. "Digitally Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Digitally Do Unto You" So what does this mean for you? If you never are going to reach out to anyone in the European Union, you don't HAVE to do anything for now. The reason we say for now is that the US may decide to bring up our standards to Europe's and then you will need to make sure your collection of user data, storage of that data, and your privacy policy be kosher. That being said, the rules are good (see below) and while you don't have to follow them, we recommend incorporating the spirit of the law into your digital policy. If you do collect user data from anyone in the European Union, you will probably need to make some changes. Here is the top level gist of what you need to do. (we will have links to the nitty gritty legal stuff at the end) Only collect the data from users that is truly required to process their request and clearly explain why it is needed. So asking for [...]The post The Cliff Notes Version of the GDPR and How It Can Affect You appeared first on Digital Caffeine.
