GDPR: Don't Panic - <AUTHOR> https://jacquesmattheij.com/gdpr-hysteria <comment><USER3> For those of you understandably intimidated by the GDPR regulations themselves, here's a good summary in plain English: [https://blog.varonis.com/gdpr-requirements-list-in-plain- eng...](https://blog.varonis.com/gdpr-requirements-list-in-plain-english/)

The UK's ICO also has a good structured summary: [https://ico.org.uk/for- organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...](https://ico.org.uk/for- organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/)

In general I agree with the sentiments in this article. I've probably spent a total of three to four days reading around the GDPR and I don't really see what's special about this law other than it's imposing decent standards on what was in effect a wildly unregulated industry in people's personal data. If you have a broad distrust of any government activity then I suppose any new laws with "fines up to €X" might feel like "I run a small site on a Digital Ocean droplet and I'm at risk of a €2m fine out of the blue." But that doesn't make it true.

<comment><USER4> There is nothing - and I do mean nothing - written into the GDPR that _requires_ any warnings of any kind, or places any limits on fines, except for $10/$20 million or 4% of revenue, whichever is greater. Period. A multimillion-dollar fine without warning for a first, minor violation is perfectly lawful under GDPR. The idea that "yes it says that but we can trust EU regulators to not assess large fines against foreign companies, even though they would benefit handsomely from them" rings hollow to me.

<comment><USER5> I think you and everyone making similar points in this thread are getting tripped up by the difference between _rules-based_ regulation and _principles- based_ regulation. This is unsurprising, given that the US is so heavily rules-based, but the EU (certainly the UK) has a long history of principles- based regulation.

In rules-based regulation, all the rules are spelled out in advance, and the regulator is basically an automaton once the rules are set. In principles- based regulation, the rules are extensive rather than complete and you expect the regulator to have some lattitude (and, if the system is well designed, a mechanism of recourse if they do something stupid).

An advocate of rules-based regulation would say this can make regulators unpredictable and capricious. An advocate of principles-based regulation would say it is an important safeguard against "rules-lawyering" and regulatory capture (especially the kind that ties new entrants up in check-box compliance that doesn't actually affect your business because all the rules have been worked around).

A classic example would be the time PayPal tried to tell the UK regulators they shouldn't be regulated like a financial institution (which is a claim they successfully made in the US). They pointed to chapter and verse of the relevant law, and said that according to subparagraph 2.b.c(iii)... and the relevant regulator essentially told them "shut up, you keep consumers' money for them and will be treated accordingly". As a result, the worst "PayPal took all my money and I can't get it back" stories generally do _not_ come from the UK. (And when they do, they are accompanied by referrals to the Financial Conduct Authority, who have teeth.)

You can approve of this way of working or not, but the GDPR is a principles- based regulation, and you'll have to engage with it on those terms.

<comment><USER6> >and you'll have to engage with it on those terms

Or you can just disengage with Europe all together, which is an obvious choice for many small to medium sized companies, given the risks and costs involved.

<comment><USER7> Good lord, it's like you didn't read the article.

Or, you're fine with a competitor who isn't afraid of entirely reasonable international laws coming in and eating your lunch.

<comment><USER6> We ran the numbers on how much it would cost to establish compliance, and with that alone it was barley worth it based on the current EU customer base we have.

We also considered all the additional liability we'd be taking on, and with that alone it was barely worth it based on the current EU customer base we have.

We'd also be very happy if one of our competitors started investing in the EU market. It's worth about 10 times less than the US market in our industry, so having them chasing peanuts in Europe (and investing in compliance with European - absolutely not international - regulations) would be a truely fantastic outcome for us.

<comment><USER8> thanks, you've pointed out a great signal that now exists. don't do business with companies that choose to pull out of the eu market rather than comply with gdpr. these are companies that have made an explicit decision that user data privacy is a burden not to be cared about.

my company OTOH is choosing to apply gdpr principles globally.

<comment><USER9> There is a difference between complying with GPDR and caring about privacy.

I completely and utterly care about privacy, but things like not tracking IP address and allowing people to request removing them are a bridge to far. I can't comply with that. I treat my customers important PII (names, addresses, etc) very delicately. But the cost of complying GPDR is too must.

<comment><USER10> > I completely and utterly care about privacy

and

> allowing people to request removing them are a bridge to far.

Are dissonant. You will have to pick the one or the other but you can't both care about privacy and not allow people to request removal of their data. That should be fairly obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The GDPR gets so much hate because it hits so many businesses where it hurts: data. GDPR "simply" gives you guidelines on how you can handle data from people within the EU. And that that data cannot be handled so liberally as it has been before. Of course that's annoying from a business perspective, but from an individuals privacy perspective, it's fantastic.

<comment><USER12> It's not that it's annoying, it's that I literally cannot answer "are we GDPR compliant?". If you search for GDPR IP address, you get a ton of different opinions. Do I need to sanitize logs? How does that fit in with the requirements for security compliance we are also subject to?

At the end of the day, I am the one person who has to answer that question/is responsible for being GDPR compliant. I've spent hours doing research, figuring out what we need to do and implementing it -- and it's a hollow victory because even though I've said yes and have 100s of articles/white papers/opinions that back up the decisions I've made, the real answer is still "I don't know".

And I absolutely know I'm not alone in this. I got GDPR compliance dropped on my lap because I did security compliance -- if you contrast NIST 800-53/800-171 against GDPR you'll see why people are pissed off. One has clear guidelines with enough room for evolving best practices written by obviously competent/experienced professionals, the other is written as basically "we'll know it when we see it".

<comment><USER13> So everything should be written out explicitly, because you'd rather complete a checkbox-ticking exercise rather than thinking about it and do the correct, ethical thing in good faith?

Sounds like a win for the GDPR to me, we know rigid checkbox-ticking is ineffective.

Apart from that, NIST 800-53/800-171 are catalogs of "security controls and associated assessment procedures" for "Federal Information Systems and Organizations". GDPR is a data protection regulation in the context of the EU legal system. Apples to oranges.

<comment><USER14> If I'm going to be fined or penalized for not being compliant then yes, explicit would be nice. Checkboxes sound great.

<comment><USER13> Fair enough. As an implementer at a company, I can understand that sentiment. But the GDPR isn't for companies, it's for users.

Laws and regulations tend to stick around for longer than expected, and they're static. Technology and "cyber criminals" are dynamic. For better or worse, the GDPR acknowledges this. I think that's a testament to the Article 29 Working Party, in a world where most politicians are clueless about technology.

<comment><USER15> > Fair enough. As an implementer at a company, I can understand that > sentiment. But the GDPR isn't for companies, it's for users.

You're absolutely right! GDPR is _wonderful_ for users as a ringing and clear statement of human rights.

Unfortunately, it also needs to be for companies because it affects companies just as much as users. I would go so far as to say GDPR rests almost _entirely_ on companies to turn this stirring declaration of human rights into rights said humans can actually make use of. In this regard, it's a collection of opportunities for improvement of awe-inspiring proportions.

You're right. Technologies and threat landscapes change. Regulation _needs_ to acknowledge this or be worse than useless. Yet, perhaps there are ways to deal with this that don't rest largely on handwaving away critical questions of what compliance actually might look like with weasel-words like "reasonable".

Does that seem possible?

<comment><USER16> GDPR protects nobody's legitimate rights. It only infringes rights of server owners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here in UK I have been receiving about 5-10 emails a day from various companies - most of whom I don't remember - telling me I need to sign up again so they can keep my details and keep spamming me.

Fantastic.

<comment><USER18> I have a lot of companies emailing me saying I can opt-out, I thought that was the opposite of what the law is saying? Eg. If you continue using our service after 23th of May you automatically agree to the new terms. Huh?

<comment><USER19> The GDPR requires affirmative consent for each specific use of your data. If the company had previously asked you "Please tick this box if you would like to receive marketing messages from us in the future", they don't need to ask for your consent again but they do need to offer an opt-out. If the opt-in was pre-ticked, vaguely worded or mandatory to submit the form, then that consent is no longer valid and they'll need to ask you to opt-in. If you didn't specifically opt-in but were getting marketing messages because you had done business with them, they need an opt-in to keep sending those messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Constantly trying to whitewash over the fact that GPDR is a huge pain in the ass and will involve a lot of work for a lot of companies is what I don't understand, but Mr. Mattheij has been doing it for months, so that's evidently very important to him for some reason.

It's chewed up a few weeks of active development time putting in features for purging and exporting anything that looks like it might be personal information, plus a considerable magnitude more hemming and hawing and trying to figure out if, how and to what extent the regulations apply to us, and how the customers that we sell our products interpret the regulations and what features they require for their interpretation of compliance. It's a big headache, especially where we are also dealing in industries that have conflicting data retention requirements.

If we didn't have EU-based customers with sufficient sales to justify the effort, there are a thousand and one other things that we could have better spent that time and energy on.

<comment><USER21> Oh man, the rest of us are so sorry that you are now required to responsibly handle personal information.

To quote the author:

> Then automate it. If you could automate the collection of the data in the > first place then you definitely can automate the rest of the life cycle. > There is no technical hurdle companies won't jump through if it gets them > juicy bits of data but as soon as the data needs to be removed we're > suddenly back in the stone age and some artisan with a chisel and hammer > will have to jump into action to delete the records and this will take > decades for even a small website. Such arguments are not made in good faith > and in general make the person making them look pretty silly after all > nobody ever complained about collecting data, in fact there are whole armies > of programmers working hard to scrape data from public websites which is a > lot more work than properly dealing with the life cycle of that data after > it has been collected. So yes, it is a burden, no, the burden isn't huge > unless you expressly make it so but that's your problem.

<comment><USER22> I am happy the author is fighting the power. However since most of us live in society we generally would prefer less chaos.

The difference between investment to collect data and investment to protect dat is there is no ROI for compliance (in any compliance domain) so the capital is not easily available.

Instead of punishing companies for existing in the universe and subject to the laws of thermodynamics, the most effective compliance regimes help transition companies proactively to lower the pain which will lower the cost to GDP and thereby angst from human beings.

The GDPR body won't even answer basic questions like whether IP addresses need to be retained or not because of the competing requirement of the EU security directive.

They have had 23 years too to prepare for this change. And they own the privacy directives. You'd expect them to be better prepared themselves. But they are being kind of arrogant and unhelpful. I suspect because they know they did not make a perfect law and they will figure it out in case law later. This capriciousness is also super annoying.

<comment><USER23> The ROI for compliance is you get to do business with EU citizens and businesses.

What EU security directive are you thinking of, regarding IP addresses?

<comment><USER24> Go look up what CPMs are for the EU. Having your website in the EU will simply not mske you much money, why even bother?

<comment><USER23> Sorry, I don't even know what CPMs are. Could you provide a link?

<comment><USER22> Cost per thousand people. It is an advertising metric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's certainly no need to panic. The article doesn't address that apart from mindless hysteria there are some very real issues with GDPR. It doesn't have to of course because as the title suggests it's more about dispelling panic than about giving concrete advice.

However, many real-life problems seemingly haven't even been considered by legislative bodies. In GDPR support forums questions like these have been routinely asked in recent months and there isn't always a clear, dependable answer:

\- How will I be able to operate my small company website in the future in a legally compliant manner? Some companies even consider shutting down their websites completely and - of all things - only using a Facebook page in the future. Hence, ironically we might very will see GDPR actually benefitting companies like Facebook at the detriment of small companies that consequently won't have complete ownership of their content anymore.

\- How exactly does a privacy policy have to be worded so I don't get sued on day 1?

\- In which way will I still be able to store address data for contacting my existing customers?

\- Will I still be able to use anti-spam and security plugins for my website? These tools might store users' IP addresses, which in some jurisdictions are considered personal data.

\- Can I still load resources like Google Fonts from CDNs or do I now have to host those myself?

<comment><USER26> Run your small company website without gathering personal data?

No-one can sue you now, that couldn't before. I'm baffled that so many people believe this. I could complain about you to my country's regulation body. Then they could decide to audit you, and for a first offense issue a warning.

If you need the address data for marketing only, and you didn't get an explicit (opt-in) yes to receive marketing, then sorry. Get that explicit opt- in yes in the next week, or delete the data.

If you need the address data for other reasons, for example fullfilling your contract with the customer, or tax records, then keep it. But _only use it for those real reasons_. No free marketing lists. Sorry.

Storing an IP for a limited time for security reasons is fine. Have rules in place for how this data is used and when it is deleted. Don't keep it longer than nessescary.

Google seems to think you can still use Fonts. They also seem to think like they will be the data controller, and not data processor, for any user data they scoop up [1]. This seems a bit weird to me. This is the only one of your questions that I'm really not sure about. If it was me, I would just host the font locally so I was sure.

1: [https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1495#issuecomment-382...](https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1495#issuecomment-382128243)

<comment><USER27> I liked the aisle, but have a lot of issues with it. This is one of my main ones: IP addresses and information security. Quoting you:

> Storing an IP for a limited time for security reasons is fine. Have rules in > place for how this data is used and when it is deleted. Don't keep it longer > than nessescary.

How long is necessary? What does limited mean? Does a regulator now get to determine what sort of algorithms I can use to protect my assets? Advanced persistent threats ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat)) can exist over a very extended--and arbitrary time period! I'm in the security software industry, and we and our customers need to detect and react to these threats. That requires data which you simply cannot obtain an opt-in for. Sure, you put that in a posted privacy policy, but if you can only keep the data for 30 days, this means actual evidence of a crime might need to be thrown out.

<comment><USER28> > How long is necessary?

As long as is needed for the stated purpose. If you're doing IP-based rate limiting with a 1 hour window, it probably doesn't need to still be in your systems >12 hours from now. If you're doing longer term IP reputation or something, keeping it around longer can probably be justified.

> What does limited mean?

The same. Long enough to serve its purpose, and no longer (without justifiable exception, such as being evidence of an actual crime, etc)

> Does a regulator now get to determine what sort of algorithms I can use

Not really, any more than they already do.

"Not guilty, Your Honour; you see, we do store people's HIV status against their real names on the public blockchain, but don't worry, it's ROT-13 encrypted! Twice!"

Also, remember that it's not _really_ the IP that you care about (from a privacy perspective). An IP+timestamp is a very discerning selector, if you have any other data at all.

Nobody knows that '192.168.1.1' is actually me. And even if they did, does it really matter?

But maybe they know that only $IP hit /orders/confirm within 5 minutes of some other system recording that $ME placed an order with other details.

From a privacy standpoint, it's your ability to cross-correlate that IP and whatever else you know about it that could allow identifying and tracking/profiling the actual person using it.

Suppose your marketing dept asked you to scan the last few weeks of security logs to see if you'd had any hits from ranges belonging to $BIGCORP who you're in tense negotiations with? Is that Ok? Or would you refuse because the security logs are collected exclusively for certain purposes of which that isn't?

<comment><USER9> That is silly. IP addresses should not be covered. I should be able to keep IPs for years. They change often anyway.

IP addresses being covered is one of my big issues with GDPR.

<comment><USER28> what value do you get from keeping them for years? Are you actively analysing and re-analysing them for any particular purpose, or is it more of a 'well, you never know...' sort of deal?

"they change often" is arguably a good reason for not keeping them. What advantage do you get from knowing that 10 years ago $IP was sending you spam if it's been though 20 different re-allocations and tens of thousands of 'actual owners' since then?

Imagine if google or cloudflare were logging every since query to their public DNS and correlating it with other access logs or google analytics or whatever. They'd be able to relatively trivially deanonymise huge numbers of actual people's identities and browsing history (beyond what they can obtain already).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This doesn't consider some factors that dictate how strong any company will experience their firehose of GDPR requests to be:

\- how incentivised people are to make GDPR subject access requests of the company (how angry, confused, hostile curious they are)

\- how easy it is for them to make requests (entirely manual vs. online service)

\- wildcard factors (internet flash mobs bent on vengeance against a corporate)

There are also possible business models that might incentivize technology players to deliberately ramp up GDPR requests.

For example, unsuccessful candidates applying for a job at a company could forward their rejection email to a bot. The bot parses the details and fires a GDPR access request in to the HR department. The candidate gets back a formatted dump by email of all sorts of recruitment data, including interview notes, etc. There are obvious ways to monetise a service like this, hence incentive for someone to do it. Recruitment at a large company means engaging with thousands of people and then rejecting them. It is natural for people to have bruised feelings, and also to be curious about why they were not hired. A GDPR button lets them indulge their curiousity and start digging in to interview notes etc.

Naturally GDPR requests like this won't flood a company on the first day of GDPR. But the internet is a turbulent place.

<comment><USER30> I agree, and there seems to be a lack of conversation around this! Next week could be ground-zero for all sorts of unintended consequences. Especially, a flashmob of GDPR requests could sink a company.

<comment><USER31> It is highly unlikely that a lot of requests will "sink" your company. As per the GDPR, you have a month to respond to requests and you can extend this period by two more months by telling the user that you need more time to process their request. (See article 12 for reference)

<comment><USER30> If 10% of the members of my website request a GDPR, then my website will no longer exist. The processing time for that would be a decade.

<comment><USER31> If this is such a serious concern, you should automate this process as much as possible. You don't necessarily need to respond manually to these requests if you put in place the required features on your website which will allow your EU data subjects to benefit from their rights.

Realistically, how hard is it to automatically grab some data from a database and export it as JSON, as well as remove data from your database pertaining to a user? With a relational database, this would be a cinch. I mention the right to access the erasure right, as I estimate these will be the most frequently called upon.

<comment><USER32> Depends on your system. We have an automated process that produces a PDF, which a human will then go through and redact so we're not leaking through the non-relevent PII of other people if one of our users isnt using the system quite properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There's currently no case law surrounding GDPR. Moreover, some elements of the GDPR are up for interpretation. People are rightfully concerned.

> "This post is an attempt to calm the nerves of those that feel that the(ir) > world is about to come to an end"

This post is actually a single person's viewpoint, a mere speculation of how things may or may not turn out to be. Your mileage may vary.

<comment><USER34> I guess we should only enact new laws which already have established case law. /s

<comment><USER33> > "I guess we should only enact new laws which already have established case > law. /s"

I disagree with the author's lenient and dismissive take on people's genuine concerns. Interpret it as you will.

<comment><USER35> That's fair. I do have my doubts about how genuine some of these concerns are though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was hoping for a nice respite to the anti-GDPR stuff we've seen recently, but this is just naked propaganda. In particular, the sentence:

"the GDPR has the potential to escalate to those levels but in the spirit of the good natured enforcers ..."

The author seems to have the idea that bureaucratic EU systems are inherently "good" and that even if things look bad on paper, it will be fine because they are "good" people. This is not how the legal system or legal compliance works.

<comment><USER36> I think this is a very distinct difference between the EU with the scaremongering removed, and e.g. the US: My experience of the EU has been that they've consistently looked out for my interests. Even in the face of the local government (I live in the UK) that have kept fighting for positions I find abhorrent (e.g. UK governments keep complaining about having to abide by EU human rights regulations for example).

Yes, we shouldn't aim to give governments power to push things to an extreme, but on the other hand we should also ensure that they have the ability to actually react to serious abuses.

In particularly in the area of data protection, I don't know of a single example where the rules have been pushed to the extreme. If anything, as a private citizen I'm disappointed there's not been stricter enforcement. As someone who has had to deal with it on the corporate side as well, it's not been hard to comply with.

Enforcement here is generally always strongly predicated on not jumping straight to the strictest possible outcome, but in carefully considering how serious a transgression is. It's not that EU systems are inherently good, but that history and practice have shown that when they give flexibility, it takes serious abuses and ill intent to end up with the strictest reactions allowed, and there'd also be little reason to assume that anyone rushing to the strictest interpretations possible wouldn't get shut down hard by the courts.

<comment><USER30> You are transposing your like of certain EU institutions (human rights regulations) and grafting them onto this legislation. This isn't how it works, not least because there has been no case-law yet, so we have no idea how it will be interpreted. Therefore a legal compliance unit has no choice but to follow GDPR the letter, which is hugely difficult and bureaucratic. The notion that they are "good-natured" is meaningless in a legal sense.

It seems many commentators here are confusing criticism of the GDPR with criticism of the EU itself. Surely people are sophisticated enough to understand that they are 2 hugely different things, and that a robust criticism of regulations and laws are part of a healthy democratic society.

<comment><USER37> As mentioned elsewhere, these regulators have been operating for a very long time. Even when dealing with the whole Facebook / Cambridge Analytica they're moving quite slowly. There have been various legal changes regarding privacy in the past. E.g. for The Netherlands it is not allowed to have a checkbox on by default to sign up to a mailing list. There's a fine if you don't abide and this fine can be very hefty. In case of problems the regulator first reaches out, a fine is the very last resort.

There has been ample history on how these regulators have been working over the past 20-40 years.

<comment><USER38> The substance of this line of criticism is that yes, it's _probably_ going to be fine. But if it's not, they can fine you at 4% of global turnover. They _probably_ won't, but they _literally can_. "I read on a blog that they'd be nice and send me a warning first" gets you exactly nowhere in court ("very well, but what did your lawyer tell you?"). The article praises the GDPR for having teeth -- being timid can be something you are because that's your nature, or it can be something your are because you don't have teeth.

This is what risk is. Absolutely, don't panic. But responsibly managing risk means considering the 100% real and existing option of regulators abandoning their previous caution and trying out their new teeth. Perhaps they get reined in, but perhaps that takes 10 years, or perhaps it turns out to be politically convenient not to rein them in a all. There are 28 EU countries, so 28 regulators, only one ambitious rising star at one of which need to "break bad".

Yes, I agree that this is probably a very small risk. But having a calm and correct view of the fact that there _is_ a risk is 100% the right move here. Something like every other lawyer in Europe is worried about this right now, and do think it's a bit of a big deal. Don't panic, but take the advice of a non-lawyer's blog over your actual lawyer's at your own extreme peril.

<comment><USER37> > "I read on a blog that they'd be nice and send me a warning first"

That's not what happened. Various people pointed out various cases where it's shown over the course of 20 years what happened. Ample history.

> Don't panic, but take the advice of a non-lawyer's blog over your actual > lawyer's at your own extreme peril.

Are you from the US or EU? Immediately going to a lawyer seems strange and unique to me. Within a big company, yeah, lawyer. Anything else unless you're doing something specific I don't see why.

<comment><USER38> > Various people pointed out various cases where it's shown over the course of > 20 years what happened

Yes, and other various other people are pointing out that now there's a new law that changes a lot of things, perhaps what happened in the last 20 years isn't a perfect guide for what's going to happen in the future.

> Immediately going to a lawyer seems strange and unique to me

I'm from the EU, and I go to lawyers for things much smaller than those that can get me fined 4% of turnover. And so should you, if you're serious about managing your risk. If your things are in order, it's not terribly expensive, and you get to lean on your lawyers professional liability insurance if things get weird regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm an attorney who's spent the last year or so working on GDPR compliance for a US SaaS provider some of whose clients have EU employees. My understanding is that it's true that EU enforcement is more in the spirit of "how can we get you compliant?" before doling out fines (vs. the US where it can be more "let's make an example of this company by hitting them with a big fine" and scaring others into compliance). I also agree that the authorities aren't going to be handing out 7 figure fines like candy, both because it's not their historical approach and because they don't have the resources to fight too many of those battles. I want to say I read that the Irish authority's annual budget is around $9M. Theirs is higher than most and Ireland is where most of the US tech giants are established due to tax laws. That said, I think to say that GDPR compliance is simple because it's text is fairly readable or that EU data protection law is simply a matter of transparently respecting people's personal data and not being a bad actor as to privacy is an overstatement. For example, the ePrivacy Directive, most known for prompting all those cookie consent banners, can be incredibly complex to comply with. Each member state has implemented that Directive in different ways. Look at this example [https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve- taken/mpns/2013732/mpn-...](https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve- taken/mpns/2013732/mpn-honda-europe-20170320.pdf) where Honda sent out emails to its 350k database simply trying to confirm continued interest in being on their list and got a 13k euro fine for their troubles. I don't know all the facts, but from the document, it doesn't appear that Honda got the fine because they were recalcitrant or being terrible actors. And if the fine is proportionate to the offense (not to the size of the violator), then 13k euro might be levied against a small company for whom it is a significant penalty (not to mention costs, legal fees, etc. in dealing with it).

<comment><USER40> The Honda case actually seems pretty reasonable to fine - Honda had an issue where consent from dealer events and other sources wasn't correctly recorded. So they have a large list of emails, where consent falls into three categories:

* Person did not consent, they left the form blank

* Person consented, but it was not recorded

* Person actively denied consent ( wrote "no")

Honda then sent commercial email to this set of users, to "confirm" their preferences. In my view, that's not reasonable - if I leave a "would you like to receive email" item in a form blank, that is not permission to send me email.

<comment><USER41> Also 13k/350k is 4 pence per email, which is tiny! Well below what they'd have had to pay if pay-to-be-received had been workable.

I'm not a fan of government or of fines, but this amount isn't even a slap on the wrist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's like if a new law were introduced requiring a license in order to ride a bike, to make sure people don't hit pedestrians or bike dangerously in the road. The license is free, it just takes a weekend to go take a written test and demonstrate that you can safely ride a bike. Some people _who would pass_ but can't be bothered to give up a weekend would instead choose to just stop biking. It's an unavoidable consequence of introducing a friction where there wasn't one, and there's no way to carefully target or wordsmith the requirement so that this doesn't happen.

I think people miss that there is a very large qualitative difference between "no law" and "law". Even a very carefully targeted law will still have the effect, on the margin, of preventing or stopping compliant activities. But in the case of something like privacy, or control of data about you, maybe that's worth it in order to stop the noncompliant activities.

On a non-hypothetical topic: does anyone have a good resource on the requirements with regard to backups? That's one of the larger technical sticking points for me - do we have to delete from our backups as well on such a request?

<comment><USER43> That's all true, but quite boring, isn't it?

Because the reverse also hold: if we remove the need for driver's licenses for cars, more people will be able to drive.

The fallacy is IMO that many people always consider the status quo ante as the perfect balance. Because we have gotten used to driver's licenses.

So the argument that new regulation stifles some non-harmful behaviour is a truism, but doesn't really contribute anything, unless it comes with numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Clearly an emotional topic. The fact remains, GDPR is a well-meaning but fuzzy law, with implications that cannot be foreseen at this point in time.

To remove _some_ of the uncertainty and automate _some_ of the compliance steps, we built a data discovery AI tech that scans corporate data to answer:

* "Do we even store personal information?"

* "Where do we keep it?"

* "How do we make sure PII is consistently stored only in the designated places?"

This may seem trivial to a micro-business that runs on a handful of database tables, which I think is where the author is coming from. But for larger companies, even understanding what's where and why (backups? emails? cloud storages?) is a highly non-trivial—if ultimately rewarding—endeavour.

</comment><comment><USER45> The problem of multiple ambiguities in GDPR hasn't really been addressed here.

Also, must be nice to live in a country where the regulator is as benevolent and reasonable as is described in this article.

I think it's ok for foreigners to be skeptical of this promise, as the article implies that this reasonableness is not encoded in law.

<comment><USER46> The regulators have been running for two decades, and this is EXACTLY how they operate. Scepticism in this case is unreasonable, given the massive evidence base.

<comment><USER47> But that's purely your own opinion.

I do have some direct experience of working with EU data protection regulators. My experience has been that they vary wildly in "reasonableness". UK ICO is pretty OK, they want companies to succeed. France's CNIL is a joke. Petty, spiteful and utterly inconsistent. I watched as a company worked closely with them to get their sign-off on a change to their terms of service and privacy policy. CNIL were happy to be involved and taken so seriously, they were satisfied with the changes and even praised them in private. After the company announced the change, some journalists saw an opportunity to make some noise and did so. CNIL then immediately changed their mind and dished out a fine, despite having previously agreed to it. What a farce.

That's at the national level. I can give many examples of cases where the EU has been anything but reasonable.

The entire argument Jaques presents here boils down to his belief that everyone working in GDPR enforcement in the EU will not only be totally predictable and reasonable _today_ but also going forward into the indefinite future.

As pointed out in the other thread, this belief is itself unreasonable, because the nature of the GDPR means that even in the unlikely even it's true today, if in 10 years a new Commission arrives and changes their mind they can retroactively decide that things previously allowed were actually illegal. The GDPR says virtually nothing about anything so they'd certainly argue such a thing was merely a "clarification" and not a retroactive change to the law.

There are plenty of examples of governments doing this sort of thing over time, including the EU, like with Apple's tax situation. Mr Mattheij appears to just write this possibility off entirely.

<comment><USER30> "his belief that everyone working in GDPR enforcement in the EU will not only be totally predictable and reasonable today but also going forward into the indefinite future."

EXACTLY! There seems to be an almost cultish devotion to the benevolent institution that it can do no wrong, neither now nor henceforth.

I understand WHY people have this belief. The EU is under constant attack at the moment from many sides, and people feel they need to defend it at all costs, even it they are wrong.

<comment><USER48> > EXACTLY! There seems to be an almost cultish devotion to the benevolent > institution that it can do no wrong, neither now nor henceforth.

You have to trust someone. Either the vast expanse of companies clearly mishandling your data, or the "benevolent" body which so far at least has a fairly good track record. It's not perfect. It's dangerous to give them too much power because you don't know how they will change in the future. But at the end of the day, I'd rather trust a governmental body which is at least supposed to look out for my interests, rather than a company whose main motivation is to exploit me for every penny I have.

<comment><USER49> A fairly good track record in which its own member states are constantly threatening to leave and one has already successfully left. As an American lokoing in from across an ocean, it does not look like a stable region that I would put trust in

<comment><USER50> As a fellow American, that sounds like you need to reconsider your news sources. Brexit was driven by propaganda, not some principled opposition to intractable problems. The "EUrocrats gone wild" stories are popular in certain circles but there's an entire cottage industry debunking them:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromyth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromyth)

<comment><USER51> Both "stay" and "exit" sides were covered pretty well.

But if Brussel's bureaucracy behaved more reasonably, UK would not run away from European Union.

<comment><USER50> Again, that's taking a talking point as a given. Some people cited that or hypothetical cost savings as a justification but the claims tended to be based on urban legends or outright wishful thinking rather than actual analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> > The GDPR will require me to hire people and my entity is too small to be > able to afford this

Q: Does my business need to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO)?

A: DPOs must be appointed in the case of: (a) public authorities, (b) organizations that engage in large scale systematic monitoring, or (c) organizations that engage in large scale processing of sensitive personal data (Art. 37). If your organization doesn't fall into one of these categories, then you do not need to appoint a DPO.

source: [https://www.eugdpr.org/gdpr-faqs.html](https://www.eugdpr.org/gdpr- faqs.html)

<comment><USER53> GDPR requires those organisations to appoint a DPO, not to hire anyone new. It's like when you designate Ben to answer the phone after 5PM, Lisa to water the plants and the last guy to leave the office to turn off the light and close the windows (and for many companies there will be a lot less work involved with being a DPO, than with switching off the lights).

<comment><USER54> Exactly. Most businesses will already be required to have several "responsible person" roles for e.g. health and safety and fire evacuations. It's just that in a 1-person business they're all the same person.

<comment><USER31> Most small companies (below 10 employees) will refrain from appointing a DPO claiming that they don't do large scale systematic monitoring (not clearly defined).

The issue however is that for a DPO you need to avoid conflict of interest, as the DPO should be as independent as possible, even though the DPO could be an employee of the company.

Shareholders, C-level execs, employees that establish means and purposes of processing or handle the actual processing cannot be reasonably expected to place the interests of the data subject(s) above those of the company.

See article 38 for reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> > I don't want to end up being arrested for GDPR violations when I go on a > holiday in Europe (yes, I really saw that one)

The US did it recently: [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/06/oliver- schm...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/06/oliver-schmidt- jailed-volkswagen-emissions-scam-seven-years)

<comment><USER54> I got into digital rights when Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested in the US for writing a PDF reader sold from Russia.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Elcom_Ltd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Elcom_Ltd).

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> > • The GDPR will enable anybody to be able to sue me, even from abroad

> The GDPR does not have this effect, but you may be interested to know that > anybody can sue you or your business for whatever reason strikes their > fancy. This is a direct consequence of doing business and has nothing to do > with a particular law. What the GDPR allows private individuals to do is to > contact their regulators and to complain if you decide to ignore their > requests.

That's not exactly correct. Art. 79 of the GDPR allows people to sue directly for violations of GDPR although it's very non-specific.

<comment><USER31> People in Europe are not extremely litigious by nature and will likely resort to calling upon their supervisory authority instead of suing directly.

What is however very interesting is article 80, which will allow a data subject to mandate a not-for-profit body to seek judicial or non-judicial remedy on his/her behalf. This will give quite a bit of power to non-profit organisations built for this purpose and will likely add quite a bit of pressure to large companies that don't comply with the law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> This article actually points out my philosophical problem with GDPR. In one point he says you have to be compliant if you want to do business in the EU. In another he observed that it is difficult (maybe impossible) to block EU folks from coming to a web presence. It's the expansive reach that bugs me.

I'll note that for real businesses this is just a thought excercise, but it's one I keep coming back to. What if some less reasonable entity attempted to regulate in this way?

<comment><USER58> Are you American, by any chance? The whole internet dances to the US tune, legally.

Welcome to our world :)

<comment><USER59> For 20+ years the US - as the dominate controlling agent regarding the Internet - ensured the modern (post early 1990s) Internet remained extremely non-regulated and non-interfered with by ~195 nations (when it came to the global Internet system). It worked globally out of the gate and required no special adherence to US laws. The Chinese did not have to adopt US freedom of speech approaches to use the Internet. The Iranians or Saudis did not have to adopt US freedom of religion approaches to use the Internet. The EU did not have to adopt US legal approaches or laws to use the Internet. Any other scenario than the one the US pursued would have resulted in a fractured, mostly useless global Internet. The US was about as good of a shepherd as any nation could have ever been: thus we got several billion users onto the Internet from wildly diverse background jurisdictions. The way the US built the Internet made it possible for the EU to say: hey, we're going to do GDPR, because that works for us (and yet the Internet still works); and for other jurisdictions to say: hey, we're going to do this that or something else because that works for us.

> The whole internet dances to the US tune, legally.

You've got that almost exactly backwards. The US approach has required almost no dancing at all to the US tune. That's precisely why ~4 billion people can use the Internet from 195 nations, all with dramatically varying laws. They're not adopting US law to use the Internet. That's why the Chinese have been able to implement their unique approach and still use the Internet (restricted to fit their tolerances at a government level).

You very specifically do not have to dance to US legal tunes to use the Internet. Even when it comes to IP laws, you do not have to dance to the US tune (Europe has varied widely from the US on such, eg as it relates to piracy, and yet the Internet keeps on regardless).

<comment><USER58> While I agree the US was generally benevolent, it did it because it knew it had the tech superiority. It's the same thing with the Opium Wars and China or Perry's gunboat and Japan: we'll force you to trade with us because we know our goods are superior and you'll buy them.

Same thing with the internet: the US was the biggest developed country, it had a large, stable, rich internal market, it had big universities churning out graduates (many of them coming from other countries!), it was the inventor of many tech things that make up the internet. So of course a less regulated internet would benefit it since its companies were best positioned to take advantage.

My guestion for the next 30-40 years: unless China screws up badly, it will overtake the US. It's simple math: a moderately rich Chinese population will overtake the US one, as it outnumbers it 4 to 1 or so. Will the US be as benevolent and open when it's the underdog?

Based on some reactions I've seen here, regarding the EU and the GDPR and also on reading a ton of comments about China, I'm not so convinced.

TL;DR: The US is reasonable, for a super power, but it didn't do it out of the goodness of its heart.

<comment><USER59> > Will the US be as benevolent and open when it's the underdog?

US benevolence will increase in direct proportion to the extent that it isn't the sole global superpower (realistically it has been the sole superpower since WW2, the USSR power projection was mostly a facade, as it always had a terrible economy). Its perceived role as global policeman, has put it into an endless number of ridiculous positions (both politically and militarily). The less the US believes it has to be the prime actor in that regard, and the more the US has to inter-operate with everyone else in a normal fashion, the less obnoxious it will be about a lot of things. It will be able to semi-normalize back to closer to how other major nations behave.

Obviously the US will remain an outsidzed global superpower. Its economy and military scale alone will ensure that. However the coming future in which China is a real rival that can stand toe to toe, will force a number of fascinating adjustments to all politics around the globe (and I mean not just to US politics, all politics for all countries).

The real question to ask is, will China be benevelont with its future power? Look at what they're doing to their people right now for the answer (vast Muslim torture camps like the Mao days, where people are being forced with violence and psychological torture to give up their Islamic beliefs; literally torturing homosexual people to convert them away from homosexuality; restricting "homosexual speech" because it's anti-Socialism; wiping out what limited speech the people of China had acquired; using its military to annex the South China Sea away from its neighbors, which is 4x the size of France or Texas; etc). Now consider for a moment that that is China just getting warmed up as a global power, and consider what other horrific things they may choose to do under dictator Xi (dictatorships have a near universal record of getting worse, rather than better, as it pertains to human rights).

Consider that China has begun an aggressive expansion of its military outside of its borders (laying down plans to build numerous foreign military bases to give it global projection capability). Now one might fairly criticize the US for its global military expanse; however the US hasn't used its might to annex nations or territory globally, it hasn't actually acted as a traditional empire (ie Ramstein military base in Germany is no threat such that the US might suddenly attempt to annex Germany). Meanwhile China routinely threatens to invade Taiwan and annex it, they get upset if you so much as recognize Taiwan as an independent nation or talk to its leader directly. Maybe next week China will decide that Mongolia too is a proper part of the greater China strategy.

So with that growing power, is China suddenly going to become a soft benevolent giant? Or will they get worse? I think the answer is obvious and the planet should be terrified about what's coming. The entire Chinese approach is incompatible with democratic values across the board, and they are without question going to throw their weight around as it pertains to censorship (they already are). They're currently busy buying up Eastern Europe and using their investments to get countries like Greece to block actions against them as it pertains to eg the South China Sea. Imagine a world under the reign of Xi, forced by threat (direct or implied) to comply with how the the CPC operates China today. If people thought the US superpower behavior was bad (a democratic nation with vast human rights protections), that's going to be 10x worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> > I was actually surprised by how easy it is to read it

there's a whole two hundred post debate around here whether ip are or aren't pii on their own, with the wast majority holding the wrong position.

there's a whole branch of gdpr that people aren't considering, which is not related to software but to your business (i.e. your mail calendar). you also need a privacy policy if you are receiving phone calls. did you know that?

there's a whole bunch of implication on how liable you are about holding unwanted personal information, including unwanted medical personal information i.e. "hi I saw your gazebo renting service, I'm organizing an event but I am unable to walk due a permanent disability and requiring a ramp is present to access your gazebo, is that so?"

there is a huge surface area for uncertainty, up and including 'best practices' that are a constantly shifting target.

edit: to clarify the calendar part: if you have a meeting with someone, that links an identity with a location. that's why it's an issue, even without considering the address book, which is another issue by itself.

<comment><USER61> >there's a whole two hundred post debate around here whether ip are or aren't pii on their own.

Largely pointless. EU courts have in the past ruled that IPs are personal data because they can be tracked back to a person. End of story.

>there's a whole branch of gdpr that people aren't considering, which is not related to software but to your business (i.e. your mail calendar).

was largely already covered by the previous EU privacy law and the german privacy law. Courts largely agree that calendars for appointments are fine as long as you keep them reasonably secure and don't throw them around in public.

>you also need a privacy policy if you are receiving phone calls. did you know that?

Yes I did. I informed myself when I registered as a small business.

<comment><USER9> > Largely pointless. EU courts have in the past ruled that IPs are personal > data because they can be tracked back to a person. End of story.

They are wrong. IPs are not personal data. End of story.

<comment><USER61> What personal data is is a legal definition, so no, you are wrong.

In the EU IP addresses are legally defined as personal data and have been for a long while now. End of story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> lol-lol Dont panic. Panic when you get something like this.

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject- acce...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-access- request-under-gdpr-karbaliotis)

Bottom line, DONT store/sell/mangle with personal data of your users unless you are able to fulfill this. I was thinking a bit about having an online store:

\- make login as it is on Hacker News, you dont need email

\- once user has selected and payed the goods, request sending address and contact (phone/email/whatever)

\- ship it, print the requested / store into cold store (it is not that hard, you do it for bitcoins, right?), delete everything except username and password (and maybe the attached goods) from server

The described process will pass the GDPR Nightmare Letter in 10 minutes (to write a general reply) that you sent to everyone requesting.

This is what traditional "physical" stores do, not the large chains, the traditional, one employee, family store. And it works.

For everything else require consent, including tracking, but think very hard if you need anything else as it will complicate your business progressively.

I really dont understand all the fuss about the GDPR, if you explain (and prove) this to ICO, I would really like to see who will punish you for that.

<comment><USER62> This is actually a great boilerplate for a response. Somebody should create a product that collects this information inside your company and formats it for sending it to any and every GDPR requester. End of story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> My (EU) clients fall into two camps. Those who haven't had to do a single thing to be GDPR compliant because they were already following the various data protection and privacy laws, and the ones panicking.

The latter group say things like "this is ridiculous, they're making us change so much" but never have an answer to the fact that they're already violating PECR or the Data Protection Act.

</comment><comment><USER64> Whatever one thinks about the subject matter, the writing in this piece is awful. You can get the substance of what the writer is saying by skipping 90% of the content. Moreover, the tone is talking down at the audience - <USER2> that audience is already excited about gdpr. This comes across as not being interested in convincing anyone but in cheerleading their position.

</comment><comment><USER65> It ain't hysteria if you're in Germany, and a private individual or a nonprofit (e.V.). Due to specialities of German law third parties can serve you legal writs for hundreds or thousands of EURos.

Which is why I'm shutting down these 20 domains running HTTP/SMTP services I'm hosting in less than a week, and wait until the smoke clears.

<comment><USER66> GDPR doesn't apply to personal projects unless those are commercial projects.

<comment><USER67> Do you have a source for this?

<comment><USER66> [https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-18/](https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-18/)

> This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data by a > natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity and > thus with no connection to a professional or commercial activity. 2Personal > or household activities could include correspondence and the holding of > addresses, or social networking and online activity undertaken within the > context of such activities. 3However, this Regulation applies to controllers > or processors which provide the means for processing personal data for such > personal or household activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> As a solo business owner based in the US, I've been spending the last couple weeks learning about GDPR and getting compliant. While it has not been a fun process, I do think in general the regulation is quite reasonable and overall good for the world in general. So far, GDPR compliance has not cost me any money, only time.

There are three problems however that I have with GDPR and I'd love to hear how other small non-EU businesses are dealing with this.

First is the requirement to have EU representation (Art. 27). Since I don't have any physical presence in the EU, GDPR requires the appointment of a representative. It would appear that a new industry has been created selling non-EU businesses GDPR representation in the EU which in my brief Google searching can cost $1000 per year or more. Are other small businesses owner out there paying for this? Or how else to deal with this requirement? Not a lawyer but this is the only part of GDPR I am tempted to ignore.

Second is the common practice of using lead magnets to collect emails for marketing. My email signup forms are very clear about marketing use, and are double opt in, and subscribers can opt out with a single click. But my research suggests that this is still not GDPR compliant unless there is an explicit consent, which I believe will reduce email signup rates. Also, while Mailchimp has a GDPR form, but it is quite large and doesn't work embedded in web page headers, sidebars or popups. I've only seen one of these Mailchimp GDPR signups in the wild and they opened a new browser tab to present the hosted Mailchimp GDPR form which to me isn't ideal. How are others handling email marketing signups? Disclosure and checkbox for consent seems a reasonable compromise but I haven't seen this very often in the wild, at least not yet, that may change come May 25. Not a lawyer but I'm tempted to keep my current forms until I see more websites make changes.

Third, I have a medium sized mailing list (less than 10,000) mostly US based emails which is important for my business. Are people running consent campaigns (as suggested by Mailchimp?) I'm concerned that I will lose a substantial part of my list due to non-response. Again, the list is double opt in and I am very reasonable with my marketing emails. (Not a lawyer) but my thought is to segment my list into EU and non-EU customers and run a consent campaign only on EU emails. Has anyone run a consent campaign and how did it work out for you?

Any thoughts or suggestions from other small and solo business owners would be much appreciated.

<comment><USER69> > has not cost me any money, only time

It sounds like you don't value your time. In my universe (software development), time is money.

<comment><USER68> No, I definitely value my time. I actually (and maybe strangely) have appreciated the opportunity to review my data processes, privacy policies and security. I think my business is better for it. Also, getting compliant is mostly a one-time effort with little maintenance, whereas paying $1000+ every year for a EU representation service that will in reality probably do absolutely nothing is very irritating to me.

That said, your point is still fair. I sometimes spend my time less-than- optimally because it feels "free."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> This is no hysteria. Depending on where your company is located the sueing risk is really high. E.g. in countries like Germany there is a whole industry which lives from sueing companies and people and I can imagine that GDPR will open a whole new sueing market there. In other countries like Austria you get first warned and then sued on big GDPR violations which is a much better solution.

So it all depends.

<comment><USER71> As per the article, GDPR does not enable you to sue the company.

> What the GDPR allows private individuals to do is to contact their > regulators and to complain if you decide to ignore their requests.

The individual will not receive a payout from a GDPR violation.

<comment><USER72> Not as per the law. The law explicitly states that option for judicial remedy exists. The article is the opinion of a lawyer based on current practice, but this is not what the law actually says.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> There's no hysteria. There's just FUD disinformation campaign - businesses who make a lot of money thanks to privacy violations are very unhappy with this and they have a lot of voices.

<comment><USER74> _I 'm unhappy_ with this because now I have to do a lot of extra work verifying that I'm not breaking some law, then implement changes in both code and license agreements, then get all the users to agree.

I've had zero profit from user data so far - to the contrary. If everyone could be billed just with some cryptocurrency, totally anonymous, _that would be great_.

<comment><USER75> The only thing I can do as a _customer_ is be mildly amused at the fact that you're complaining it's inconvenient for you to respect my privacy now that a law is coming into effect forcing you to do so.

From the other end of the spectrum, I _know_ you're wildly exaggerating the difficulty of compliance.

<comment><USER74> It's not inconvenient, it's _costing me money_. I don't _want_ your data, I _need to_ collect it and store it to comply with other laws, now I need to _verify_ that the particular way I collect and store that data isn't violating some other new law.

You _are not my customer_ , but even if you were, keep in mind that for every piece of regulation (and there's tons of it!) I need to fulfill, I have to pay, which means _you_ need to pay. I need to set prices to keep my bottom line. If I can't keep my bottom line, I'll eventually stop providing the service, because I'm not providing it for fun. That's for _paid_ services.

Now, some companies don't even charge you, they provide (aggregate) data about you to advertisers, who are then willing to pay more for their ads. It only makes sense, how much would _you_ pay for an ad for a piece of specialized software that gets shown to the wrong audience 99.99% of the time? What's going to happen if that kind of data usage becomes infeasible? Those companies need to start charging, or go out of business. There will be less free services. I suppose that helps companies who _do_ charge, but it hurts people who can't pay and don't care about data collection.

I'm not providing such a service, but if I was, you would be _paying me_ with your "privacy". If "respecting your privacy" means you don't want to pay, _you can get lost_ , because you're only costing money. The definition of "customer" is that you _compensate_ the other side.

<comment><USER76> Your comment led me to wonder if any businesses are considering raising prices for EU customers as a result of this law. I'm not so much wondering about the "we lost revenue because we can't sell your data anymore", but more along the lines of "complying with the regulatory environment in this region is expensive, and we pass the cost of compliance along to customers in the region".

I recently learned about the AU warranty rules, which are very consumer- friendly — and which a commenter pointed out might be the reason that Apple and others charge significantly more when selling products in AU.

Note: I'm not saying anyone _should_ raise prices as a result of GDPR, just wondering if anyone has done so.

<comment><USER77> Yes, it's being considered.

<comment><USER76> Do you think companies will/should make explicit the cause of higher/differential pricing? On the one hand, it could anger consumers. On the other hand, it would provide transparency so that consumers would understand where the price increase came from.

<comment><USER77> Honestly, it's not my call to raise prices or not, but it doesn't seem like they intend to hide it, should it happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> I can tell you that GDPR is going to cause issues with block based backups. Many hosting providers don't separate customers on different block devices. When you back up a block device you have snapshots that have many different organizations data on them.

Part of making good backups is knowing that the backup can't change. The only solution now is to add paths to go back and modify those backups to remove customer data when asked too.

That is my plight anyways.

<comment><USER79> The solution is to keep a list of "things to exclude" if a backup is ever restored. This is reasonable. Rewriting old backups is not reasonable.

<comment><USER80> Would such a list not by nature consist of PII?

<comment><USER79> Not necessarily. It might consist of user IDs (integers, UUIDs) or hashed values of something that can be mapped to the user...

<comment><USER80> User ID's are considered PII though. If it can be mapped to the user, it's by definition identifying information

<comment><USER79> Identifiers that have no meaning outside of your system are not PII.

<comment><USER81> Reading [https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data- protection/refo...](https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data- protection/reform/what-personal-data_en) I would agree, of course if that identifier is not in some other database, that maps it to a person. If you have just ids in a backup and you remove the person-ID mapping this should be fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> > this particular one has the interesting side effect of causing mass hysteria > in the otherwise rational tech sector.

* Y2K

* Dot Com hysteria

* Dot Com crash hysteria

* AWS outages

* Will robots replace us ?

* Will Microsoft crush me ?

* Will Google crush me ?

* I just raised £30M series A, where my Aeron at

* Nosql means I can throw away everything I knew about databases

* Web first

* Mobile first

* XML everywhere

* OO everywhere

* Javascript everywhere

* AI everywhere

Where is the evidence for rational behaviour ?

<comment><USER74> I chuckled at that sentence as well. It's not that the tech sector is rational, it's that a lot of the _people working in it_ are desperate to maintain a self-image of being a rational, scientific-minded person. Then, if some evidence collides with that self-image, we just _blame it on management_. Problem solved!

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> One question that I have thought about is how are foreigners supposed to learn about the GDPR's existence? If it wasn't for the fact that I spend more time on HN that I should I would never have heard of it. I doubt there are many businesses here in Australia that know about it.

<comment><USER84> I first learned about it when I did a google search to figure out why I was getting so many "we've changed our privacy policy" emails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Is the system of warnings and increasing fines described in the post a part of the law, or does one need to rely on the "spirit of the good natured enforcers" if they are unable (or unwilling) to immediately comply fully?

<comment><USER86> It is, but in a vague way, see article 83[0], where to choose what fine to apply you must consider, amongst other things:

(f) the degree of cooperation with the supervisory authority, in order to remedy the infringement and mitigate the possible adverse effects of the infringement

If an authority did not go this way any fine could be voided by an appeal.

[0] [http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-5419-2016-IN...](http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-5419-2016-INIT/en/pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> I don't think it's really that simple. especially the deletion requirements. There are just so many IT systems that really don't support deletion. An absolute worst case I can imagine is GitHub being asked to delete an account which had commits in multiple large projects. Are they going to alter those projects source code?

<comment><USER88> This is already a "solved problem" though. If you post copyrighted material to Github, Github will have to remove it.

If you're posting users information to a public repo, then you fully deserve whatever impacts you'll face when you have to delete it.

<comment><USER89> > If you're posting users information to a public repo

Like their name and email address in every commit they submit?

I've already seen a notice from GitLab requiring me to consent to waive my rights to have that info deleted if, e.g. I were to contribute to the GitLab open source project. But I'm not sure that that's even enough for GDPR.

<comment><USER90> The waiver is only one aspect of it. Waiver only applies when consent is required. Article 6 of GDPR also allows for the use of personal information when "processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party..." Consent is not required when it is a necessary part of performance under a contract. GitLab's updated terms state that as part of the agreement to voluntarily contribute to GitLab projects, contributors acknowledge and agree that their personal information will become part of the repository as part of the Git functionality. Therefore, their personal information will not be deleted and will remain in the repository so as not to impact the code base. This only applies to those who contribute to GitLab projects. This does not apply to general use of the software. There is still much that is unclear regarding GDPR but we are doing our best to comply and protect individuals' privacy. An important function of this waiver and acknowledgement is to provide transparency to our contributors. If an individual does not want their information to be maintained, they have the option not to contribute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> I'm not sure about the point regarding the DPD. EU Directives themselves don't have teeth, but they're supposed to be transposed into national laws - e.g. the DPA in the UK - and would be enforced nationally. A regulation comes into law across the EU, but is still often transposed, and the enforcement mechanism (to begin with) is still basically the same.

He's right that the DPD was not well-adhered to, though.

<comment><USER46> The problem with the laws stemming from the DPD was that there were different laws in each EU country, and the enforcement options were too weak for slippery international corporations.

One critical change in the GDPR is the mandatory reporting of significant breaches. Before, it was entirely optional, so reports could come out years after the even once the material surfaced online.

<comment><USER91> Sure, it wasn't consistent, but the argument about lack of enforcement really comes down to the national regulators not taking their jobs seriously enough or being given sufficient resources. The ICO in the UK has only ever issued pretty small beer fines.

The problem with self-regulation in this area is that there is significant competitive advantage to be gained by not being particularly careful. In that sense, I think GDPR evens the playing field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've been doing a bit of consulting work on the GDPR and for the most part small sites aren't going to have a lot of headache dealing with the GDPR requirements.

Typical, simplified, workflow (varies):

1) Review what data you collect and why

2) Document these in an updated privacy policy along with third parties you share data with and why

3) Update all forms on your site collecting personal information

4) Update your cookie policy and the way you handle cookies, for some of these you might need consent, for some there might be exemptions

5) If you expect this to be an issue, set up automated means of handling requests pertaining to data subject rights, otherwise process them as they come via email

While some smaller sites are getting around the need for an EU rep by claiming that they are only processing data occasionally and not on a large scale (whatever that means, as it's not defined by the GDPR) there is a big problem with getting an EU rep, because as opposed to a DPO, which doesn't have liability, your EU representative "should be subject to enforcement proceedings in the event of non-compliance by the controller or processor." making that natural or legal person liable, so you won't be able to easily outsource this.

If you have set up shop in the EU, then it's pretty easy to handle the aspect of an EU rep. Also, if you're transferring data between your EU and US offices/datacenters, you can self-certify under the privacy shield, starting from ~$250 per year to not have to deal with binding corporate rules or standard contractual causes, so that you can effectively make these transfers "safe" under the GDPR, along with various technical safeguards, of course.

<comment><USER92> Privacy Shield starts at $500 per year for the smallest company, and that's before you contract with a mediator (lowest cost there is $50/year if you use the EU options). Unless I'm missing the option for $250/year on their website?

<comment><USER31> I was referring to [https://www.privacyshield.gov/Program- Overview](https://www.privacyshield.gov/Program-Overview) where single framework (EU-U.S.) for companies with between $0-$5 million the yearly fee is $250. If you want to add Swiss-U.S. privacy shield as well, then $375 per year for both.

<comment><USER92> Thanks - I have no idea where I got the $500 number in my head. Maybe I was thinking of one of the private mediators I was researching? Sorry for questioning your initial number...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> I think much of this probably comes down to cultural and ideological differences between the US and the EU. It certainly seems that almost all of the rabidly pro-GDPR crowd is from the EU.

Interesting: I have a number of anti-GDPR comments here and on last night's GDPR thread that got upvotes last night US-time, heavily downvoted throughout the night, and are now going back up :)

<comment><USER75> Yes, because being against a law that is both reasonable and the right thing to do doesn't make any sense when you're a real live human being. The hysteria about businesses imploding under legislation is classic internet outrage at a phenomenon not very well understood. If you actually took the time to read the source material, you could very see that it's reasonable and made to protect you. At the same time, you would see that there will not be any world-ending fines handed out for literally no reason (on a slight tangent I don't understand why it is so impossible to grasp that this isn't something that happens in the EU).

<comment><USER93> This is a law with good intent that was very poorly written and is very ambiguous. Most of the people with your view posting here aren't experts in this regulation or the law in general, but just armchair lawyers who scanned this regulation and like the intent so they argue that it's simple.

Ironically, if you asked 10 different people with that position about basic facts about this law, you'd all have different answers. Maybe if it's so simple you could all take a few mins to get your story straight on how it works?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> > As soon as you do business abroad you will have to comply with the laws of > those countries.

But are you doing business abroad, just because you're on the internet?

Is it not the customer who is coming to you to to do _their_ business abroad, while you do your business in the country you live in?

<comment><USER59> The author claims that local law compliance has always been the case. That is in fact incorrect and is a glaring mistake in the article. For the first 20 years of the Web's popular usage globally, you in fact mostly did not have to comply with local laws when it came to commerce online - there were few laws, and most jurisdictions had yet to flesh out how they were going to regulate and apply their laws or not. You simply opened up shop and sold to anyone from anywhere that wanted to buy from you, and you did not need to give a second thought to anything else.

Coming next is a global compliance nightmare. If you want to sell globally, you'll have to comply with dozens of unique local approaches. Small businesses won't stand a chance of being able to deal with that. An army of fee charging middle-men will spring up offering solutions, extracting fees accordingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> This is just an author wishlist and not the reality. I especially find the "clearing house" fantasy amusing. How he thinks this house of bureaucrats will be able to judge that John Does complaint has any merit?

<comment><USER96> I recognized your user name from the other thread ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17095217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17095217)), it looks like you've made up your mind (to the point where your comments where ridiculous enough to be deleted) and no amount of argument will even get you to consider any other options.

Why don't you tell us how you really feel?

<comment><USER97> And the author of this article, who was also very active in the same thread hasn't made up his mind?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> > Do you know a good GDPR consultant?

>> Yes.

> Can you tell me their email address?

>> No.

<comment><USER99> My DPO didn't allow me to store that kind of personal information /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> Do what I say do not do what I do.

Today I've been asked by a library of "Junta de Anadalucia - Spain" to accept it's terms and conditions to use the wifi internet connection provided for it's users and it's a clear violation of the GDPR by a government body, basically they're asking for a blank check to do whatever they want without boring to ask/inform the user.

Translation by translate.google:

====

The Telecommunications Corporate Network of the Junta de Andalucía reserves the right to monitor and collect information while the user is connected to the Service. This information can be used at the discretion of the Telecommunications Corporate Network of the Junta de Andalucía and can even be shared with the State Security Bodies, their associates or suppliers.

Likewise, the Telecommunications Corporate Network of the Junta de Andalucía reserves the right to revise this agreement at any time.

The user must accept the General Conditions of Access each time they use the service and, it is your responsibility to review it each time the Service is accessed in case there has been any change.

The Telecommunications Corporate Network of the Junta de Andalucía, reserves the right to withdraw the Service, modify the specifications or forms of use thereof, as well as change access codes, users, passwords and other security elements necessary to access the Service . IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THESE TERMS, INCLUDING ANY MODIFICATIONS, DO NOT ACCESS OR USE THIS SERVICE.

====

<comment><USER101> Well, presumably you can report them to the relevant regulator, then. That's the point of the law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> As someone more on the hysterical side, good post, thanks. Can you clarify one part for me? Take this bullet:

> _The GDPR is going to expose me to fines of up to 20 million Euros for even > the slightest transgression_

> _No, the GDPR has the potential to escalate to those levels but in the > spirit of the good natured enforcers at the various data protection agencies > in Europe they will first warn you with a notice that you are not in > compliance with the law, give you some period of time to become compliant > and will - if you ignore them - fine you. That fine will be proportional to > the transgression. You can of course ignore the fine and then 'all bets are > off' but if you pay the fine and become compliant you can consider the > matter closed._

What if you get warned and _decide at that point_ to just shut the site/app/business/project down?

Or is it the case that once you begin operating under the GDPR era, you'll have to handle those "good natured" enforcement warnings, delete data, etc?

I get that I'm _probably_ compliant, and _probably_ wouldn't have any complaints against me. I just don't know if it's worth waiting it out to see if there's an issue, or if _now_ is my only chance to easily not deal with it by just blocking EU users.

</comment><comment><USER102> I applaud the GDPR for automatically unsubscribing me from mailing lists I bothered to take the time to unsubscribe from.

</comment><comment><USER103> [https://pawelurbanek.com/gdpr-compliance-blog- rails](https://pawelurbanek.com/gdpr-compliance-blog-rails)

My take on GDPR compliance from a solo developer perspective without a legal team to back him up.

<comment><USER104> > IP addresses collected by Google Analytics

Why should this be _your_ headache? It's collected by Google, not you.

<comment><USER103> I am afraid it is not so simple. There is a thing with data collector, and data controller in GDPR I don't full understand yet. It's not like you're not responsible for data collected by services that you hook up to your application.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Anyone know if it is easy to block any user from the EU in AWS? It's been determined that Google Analytics has a greater value than Europe.

</comment><comment><USER105> I find this confusing:

> Note that the 20 million Euros or 4% of global turnover is the maximum fine, > the specific language is 'a fine up to €20 million or up to 4% of the annual > worldwide turnover of the preceding financial year in case of an enterprise, > whichever is greater', so that's the maximum of the fine that's being set by > the 20 million or the 4%, and this bit is there to ensure that even the > likes of Facebook and Google will not simply ignore the law and pay the fine > to be able to continue as they have so far. This in no way should be read as > you, the small business operator will face a fine of 20 million for each and > every infraction that could be found.

Saying that this is intended to be aimed at the Facebooks and Googles is all well and good, but that's covered by the "4%" criterion. The €20 million figure is aimed at companies that have a global turnover of less than €500M, not the Googles and Facebooks. That's why it's scary.

</comment><comment><USER106> Does anybody know if it's required to remove CDN links (such for Google fonts, cdnjs, etc.) and host all assets locally instead unless consent is given? Assets from CDNs are required for a site to function; what's not required is to send `Referer:` so maybe it's sufficient to set a referrer-policy.

<comment><USER107> I wonder the same. Would I need the web visitor's consent for loading a reCaptcha to verify they're indeed human?

Google fonts is just one of the many font libraries. For example, most web font licenses at myfonts.com don't permit webmasters to self host them. Bypassing the HTTP referer download protection, downloading them and then self hosting the font files could lead to significant legal problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> Where is the form on this site that claims to be GDPR compliant to get my IP removed from the server logs?

<comment><USER50> Keep reading the rest of that paragraph:

> Well, this website is fully compliant with the law, so at least in this > particular case it seems to work. Why? Because I don't store any information > about you. That's a conscious choice on my part which I made long before the > GDPR was even talked about in public. But if your situation is more complex > then you too can be compliant, or at least - and this is key - you could try > to be compliant. For instance, one oft heard argument is that no webserver > (or even any internet service) is going be able to be compliant because all > web servers log IP addresses, and IP addresses are PII. But that argument > does not hold water. There are several reasons for that, the major ones > being: webservers only log IP addresses if you configure them to do so. > Almost all webservers have a formatting option that determines what exactly > is logged and you could configure your webserver to not log the whole > address but just the network portion. You also have the option to log the > address and to disclose that you do so in your privacy policy, but then you > will have to allow for the removal of that data on request, which you may > find burdensome (or not, that depends on the volume of such requests). > Finally, you may have a legitimate reason to log the IP address, provided > you delete it after you are done with whatever use you collected it for in > the first place. There is enough room in the GDPR to hold on to the address > for 30 days with a possible extension of another 60 days after which an > automated reply to the user can tell them their IP address was purged and > you'd be in compliance. That's one of the reasons why I think the GDPR is a > surprisingly good law, most of the times when legislation is written that > impacts technology the end result is absolutely unworkable, in this case > most scenarios seem to work well for all parties involved.

<comment><USER109> Ok but we have to trust this person that they don't store IP information. There is no way of knowing for sure. And there is no obvious way to detect a lie on this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> >Don't Panic

That's thoroughly good advice. Panic reduces efficiency and the capability to react rationally.

>Becoming compliant with this law will cause my business to go under

>If becoming compliant with the law will cause your business to go under that is more or less the same as saying that your business is built on gross privacy violations. So if that's your busines model then good riddance to you and your company

Hmm, I would nitpick on that, Google Adsense has been ass about getting GDPR compliant, they don't offer any method of serving ads without storing consent including their tracking-free ads. This is not something that affects me personally but I know people running larger websites that rely entirely on ad revenue (premium model is hard since they drive visitors with UGC, most people don't have an account, they don't want to paywall anything or ask money from the people that drive traffic). The site itself is already fully compliant and with exception of very minor changes (minimum age 13 -> 16, adding a "download everything" button) was compliant in the past.

I blame Adsense on that one, not GDPR though. The ad industry has to adapt, pushing the work on the website operators won't help and is not appropriate. IMO Adsense should either offer a fully consent-free ad experience in compliance with the GDPR or operate the consent dialog for the website owner in a non-intrusive manner.

Maybe this means there will be an opening for a GDPR-compliant adnetwork in Europe

</comment><comment><USER110> This is how I understand the GDPR:

        You cannot store a users personal data like IP
        or cookie id unless you have consent from the user.

I expect that _nobody_ will comply with this.

Smaller companies seem to think GDPR is something they can fix by changing the legalese in their impressum and privacy policy. "Yet another trip to the impressum generator".

Bigger companies seem to pretend they misunderstand the GDPR. I got emails and popups from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc informing me about all kinds of nonsense about how they changed their policies and asking me all kinds of unrelated questions about what kind of ads I want to see.

Not a single company asked me for permission to store my personal data.

<comment><USER54> > You cannot store a users personal data like IP or cookie id unless you have > consent from the user.

This isn't true; there's a list of reasons you can keep information and "with consent" is one of them, "legitimate business need" another: [https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general- da...](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data- protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing/)

But: "However, an individual always has the right to object to processing for the purposes of direct marketing, whatever lawful basis applies."

So: you can store IP addresses as part of your information security needs, but _not_ turn round and use them for direct marketing. (I'm not sure if web advertising counts as "direct marketing" here)

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> How can I be non-compliant with GDPR? If I could care less about it, is it enough for me to do nothing? Should I expect that European users should find out themselves that they my website is not GDPR-compliant? Or I must actively ban EU IPs?

<comment><USER31> If you actively choose not to pursue compliance, you should make it clear in your own privacy policy that the site is not for use by EU/EEA citizens and also use IP geolocation to block their requests.

<comment><USER112> You should require users to positively certify that they are not EU/EEA citizens, and refuse service if they are. Blocking by IP is a good idea but not sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> > There are several reasons for that, the major ones being: webservers only > log IP addresses if you configure them to do so.

That's not true. Apache and Nginx default logs IPs. Maybe OP should check his Nginx logs.

</comment><comment><USER114> > This in no way should be read as you, the small business operator will face > a fine of 20 million for each and every infraction that could be found.

Thank you, random stranger on the Internet! However, that is not the law. And even if you are right? As I posted yesterday, half of the employers in the USA has 1-4 employees and make $387,200 on average yearly. Even if they get fined to 1% of the maximum, they are completely wiped out. So no, it's not hysteria, it's plain business sense for them to slap an IP ban on it and move on.

</comment><comment><USER69> I'm a citizen of the United States, which is a sovereign nation.

I will never pay the EU "internet transgression fees", no matter how well intentioned they are. Full Stop.

</comment><comment><USER115> Hi thanks for his very interesting,

What I think is a big problem this stuff about requiring consent. This is a big issue at the moment for website owners and app developers who have on line advertising from vendors such as Google (Admob/Adsense) and use e.g. Google Analytics for development support. These guys do not record individual user details and have no interest in doing so.

Specifically for such people there is an issue where personalised advertising (according to to Google and others) needs an opt in, fine but for app developers and web site owners they don't have any user details other that maybe ip address so if they put up a pop-up and record consent how do they know who the user is if they don't have any other users info.

This is leading to absurd discussions re for example Google Analytics used by millions of websites and apps. There is something called client id which GA uses to identify unique "users" or website visitors. Now apparently as it is unique this is personal data so should require consent according to some experts I have read. But as it anonymous how can it be identified who it "is". If a user demands to know what data a website/app has and mentions the client id info well who knows for sure what any client id represents in the real world ?

More to the point what is the likely legal/financial consequence if a user claims that the website id did not ask for consent for this client id to be recorded (how would they be able to prove which one it was that was theirs anyway) ?

Would they be able to sue ? I presume not. So is the IC going to be interested in this apparent breach ? And if the developer/website owner had a data breach where they GA account was compromised would they have to inform all the Client ID individuals ? Again obviously not but you see how these discussions are going !

</comment><comment><USER49> What is stopping competitors from burying each other in legal work? Just start commenting names and addresses on various pages and submit complaints

<comment><USER116> What does competitors stop doing that now? No business is 100% compliant in any law. If they want they can just for the sake of it bury you in legal work already.

See Google vs Oracle. Apple vs Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> > So if that's your business model then good riddance to you and your company.

That's the best way to ensure EU will never have a decent startup scene.

</comment><comment><USER117> I spent two hours today at our campsite working on my web sites to make them reasonably compliant. One problem area is that I serve my blog on Google Blogger. With pained reluctance I turned off comments and stopped showing my followers. I also linked to Google's own GDPR info page. I used to use Jekyll and maybe I should go back to doing that.

Any suggestions?

</comment><comment><USER113> > As soon as you do business abroad you will have to comply with the laws of > those countries.

Serving a webpage is not doing business though.

</comment><comment><USER118> Not sure what "it will ensure that the public will not be able to use the GDPR to harass businesses" as GDPR explicitly empowers individuals to seek compensation. [https://gdpr-info.eu/art-82-gdpr/](https://gdpr- info.eu/art-82-gdpr/)

</comment><comment><USER119> GDPR puts into jeopardy the business model that almost every consumer internet business has run on, post internet bubble: advertising.

That's what is at jeopardy here and nobody is willing to just say it.

Don't agree with the concept of tracking users to serve them ads? Great, make the case that GDPR ends the scourge of advertising subsidized applications as services.

Let's not ignore it though. The reality is, a lot of internet companies that consumers use and like, rely on either selling advertisers access to their market or sell user contact data outright, because there is no other way to make money.

If the argument is that this is an unethical and harmful way to keep services alive then we need to agree that the bulk of the last 20 years of startups business models are broken and what the implications for future internet business models are.

<comment><USER116> > we need to agree that the bulk of the last 20 years of startups business > models are broken

I agree.

If a startup is build on selling my data, I am more willing to pay a fee then to have them sell my data.

If we could go back to WhatsApp having a fee instead of Facebook using and selling my (meta)data, I would switch anytime. If Telegram starts raising a fee for using their messenger without anybody reading my messenges/location/... I am all in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER120> > ... it may not be possible for you to lock Europeans out reliably enough...

Here's a fun little example of this: If one of your parents was a British citizen, then you're a British citizen 'by descent'—not merely eligible to become a British citizen after you fill out a form, you're an automatic British citizen by default unless you renounce your citizenship. (This has caught out at least one member of the Australian parliament, where dual citizens aren't allowed to serve.) This means that you can have someone who's an EU citizen (for the time being, at least), who doesn't live in the EU, has never set foot on EU soil, and maybe isn't even aware that they're an EU citizen themselves.

<comment><USER10> Your example is interesting but the fact that it is such a remote edge case means that _if_ such a person were to raise an issue with their _local_ DPA they will find that no such institution exists so you are safe to ignore that situation for all intents and purposes. Even so it would be common courtesy to honor a removal, update or insight request from that individual as well as from all other individuals that your service caters to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> > The EU regulators see their job as ensuring compliance, not as creating a > source of income.

I thought one of the objective of EU is to make US social media pay their fair share. Citing same article:

> European holdings or that use the EU to avoid paying taxes rightly worry > about this particular aspect

So, what is it?

</comment><comment><USER121> This is what pisses me off the most about all the hysteria and whining:

" _The law has been in effect for over two years at this point, and the DPD, the European Data Protection Directive has been in effect for over two decades. So no, this law was not sprung on anybody, though it is very well possible that you only became aware of it a few weeks or months (or days?) ago. If that's the case do not panic, you too will most likely be fine._ "

Nevermind the fact that the underlying privacy laws are much older, and so many practices were already essentially illegal but went unchallenged so far.

<comment><USER89> > > The law has been in effect for over two years at this point

So what's this whole thing that's going to happen soon? It's going into double effect or something?

<comment><USER116> The law was made public two years ago, to give companies time to get compliant. It actually goes into effect next friday.

<comment><USER10> It was already in effect, it just wasn't enforceable and that is what is changing next Friday.

<comment><USER109> In effect but not enforceable means its not in effect in a way that matters to anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> > in the spirit of the good natured enforcers at the various data protection > agencies in Europe

Is this serious? Why would we assume enforcers to be good natured if they benefit from fines. Or to assume they would stay good natured, even if you have the most perfect humans there now.

It's far more likely that the EU is creating tools to prevent disruption and manipulate markets. The template will likely be followed elsewhere, effectively elevating the state's data collection abilities over all other organizations.

Note, Bitcoin does not seem compatible with their laws.

<comment><USER123> Yes I'm sure enforcers are looking to fine Bitcoin.

<comment><USER122> I'm not making that argument. It's a reflection of how the law is about expanding government power without considering technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER124> What really annoys me about GDPR is that, given all the confusion surrounding the law, a lot of GDPR professionals are popping up everywhere.

There are a lot of people making money by providing GDPR-compliant-solutions. To avoid this, all that had to be done was to write a clear text with everything everyone had to do to be compliant, instead of pilling up some big and dubious words that no one really knows what they mean.

Concerning the law itself, it's a lot of fireworks. Give it a few months and no one will care about it again.

</comment><comment><USER125> How does this affect people who aren't based in Europe?

<comment><USER95> How do you check if someone is an EU resident?

<comment><USER126> Geolocation, IP Lookup etc. You generally shouldn't care whether they're a resident in the EU, but just whether they are in EU or not. Remember GDPR doesn't cover any citizens from EU who aren't in EU.

<comment><USER95> I read that GDPR applies to EU residents. That means someone who is EU resident non necessarily could be browsing from the EU. For example when on holidays.

<comment><USER126> Yes, but you cannot check whether a person is a resident unless you explicitly ask them. There are no "public" API.

It's much easier and safer to just assume someone who's in Europe is a resident, rather than figuring out if they really are.

GDPR only applies to EU residents, yes, but not if they're on ex. holiday outside of EU.

Say, a EU citizen is on holiday in The U.S.

In such case the EU citizen is not protected by GDPR.

<comment><USER95> But this is only your assumption and not a fact. Person on holiday is still EU resident and enjoys protection of GDPR. Do you have a source that says that GDPR doesn't apply to IP outside of EU?

<comment><USER126> It's not by my assumption. I work with GDPR implementations. Read the GDPR yourself if you want a source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER127> For a lighter take on a Friday, read how Site-Lokd™ brewery technology solves GDPR crisis: [https://www.inversoft.com/blog/2018/05/16/site-lokd- brewery-...](https://www.inversoft.com/blog/2018/05/16/site-lokd-brewery- technology-solves-gdpr-crisis/)

Enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER116> Thanks for this article. I wholeheartedly support your stance of: > In that case please shut down or do not serve EU customers

</comment><comment><USER128> > If you're Mark Zuckerberg however I would definitely advise not to ignore > this, however the chances of Mark reading this blog post are nil.

As this is top of HN, perhaps there is a good chance he _will_ read this because of the his FB staff who read this and can't resist telling him? :)

</comment><comment><USER129> I'm a EU citizen and proud of EU actually, something I don't feel very often btw, for being in the forefront in law-making that protects the privacy of individuals.

My vocabulary has been enriched with a new word: PII. I like it. It simplifies when thinking about GDPR. I expect one or two years from now I'll know the important parts of GDPR like the back of my hand.

But right now every person in the world running a multinational company needs to understand a new piece of legislature that threatens 4% of their annual revenue. You have better things to do and so I understand everyone's anger.

But is it wrong to force business-runners to learn about GDPR, stuff that's pretty close to human rights, like "don't track any of my PII without telling me exactly what you plan to do with it"? Is it wrong to now have to learn this, as a web/app developer?

I'm sooooo sick of being tracked. It has definitely made me exit the social media world all together, six months ago. Even though it is detrimental to my career I even asked Linkedin to erase my data. I truly hope my career isn't screwed just because I refused to give Microsoft a detailed description of 30% of my person, my whole work life that they can connect to an email address (some people even give them their phone number), IP, tracking cookie, thus a Facebook profile, real or shadow, thus to the most detailed graph of PII there is, probably in the whole universe. Hopefully in the whole universe otherwise civilizations on other planets took a wrong step somewhere.

I hope GDPR leads to PII being treated as gold by the market because it's so rare. Because isnt' it better to skip all this tracking-business that having to deal withstuff like GDPR?

No cookies for me please. Ans I'm also sick of having to run javascript.

</comment><comment><USER130> I just wanted to register my appreciation for this post, it's a breath of fresh air.

</comment><comment><USER131> GDPR: Don't sell/leak/publish customer data you're fine :)

</comment><comment><USER104> Remember guys, while you are stressing over how to work with GDPR, Facebook literally listed all their existing data collection items and forced everyone to consent. Total increase in privacy: 0

<comment><USER132> People can now remove that consent whenever they want and force their data to be deleted at any time. This is a win. There are other wins, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> > The GDPR is going to expose me to fines of up to 20 million Euros for even > the slightest transgression > No, the GDPR has the potential to escalate to > those levels but in spirit

So, yes, but maybe no?

</comment><comment><USER133> You missed a key question here. As a business owner, what on earth do I need to do next?? Do I need to email all my users giving them an opt-out option?!

<comment><USER10> Working on that, there will be a second installment on Monday and - possibly, if I can find the time - a third with a number of case studies.

This whole sequence was sparked through a discussion about the GDPR on HN a few weeks ago and I've been working on it off-and-on hoping to get it done before the law becomes enforceable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> "Add filters keeping out children"

What are some methods for doing this? (aside from asking for birthdate, which is far from fool proof)

</comment><comment><USER135> There is no need for hysteria. On the other hand many people from the EU (me included) will want to keep using HN after May 25.

</comment><comment><USER136> GDPR is just good data protection practice.

</comment><comment><USER137> Nice post.

Typo: "food safety laws" is listed twice in the bullet points for the lemonade stand.

<comment><USER138> I was wondering if that was a joke, for added emphasis, or a mistake.

<comment><USER10> It was a mistake, thank you both, it has been fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER139> > If becoming compliant with the law will cause your business to go under that > is more or less the same as saying that your business is built on gross > privacy violations. So if that's your business model then good riddance to > you and your company.

Hear hear!

</comment><comment><USER140> Exactly. People try to explain to me how it is impossible to comply and usually it turns out that it would be easy. I think the problem most of time that people misunderstanding the requirements or not reading GDPR (not even TLDR versions).

<comment><USER95> It is easy if they believe particular person's interpretation. But that doesn't mean they are right. People have huge problems with interpreting written word if it is not written without a room for interpretation and if you add to the mix bureaucrats that have targets to meet you'll see it will not be easy at all.

<comment><USER128> Am in EU, am involved in some compliance stuff and have talked to plenty others at other companies, and it really does seem to be a nothing-to-see-here for all companies except the sleezy ones.

<comment><USER141> In all of my research, talking to lawyers, and seminars on GDPR, it is about:

1\. Ask permission for collecting data

2\. Keep sensitive data safe

3\. Restrict access to said data

4\. Keep a log of what happens with the data

5\. Delete it upon request

6\. Have all of the above documented and adhere to the protocol.

It's such a none issue unless you're relying on the very thing GDPR is designed to combat. If you not collecting and selling peoples data, and you don't do the above already, see this as a good opportunity to do what you should have been doing all along. There is such an awareness now, that it's the easiest it has ever been to know how to handle sensitive data properly.

<comment><USER128> Completely agree with everything you list, and would add that 6. you can't force a user to give up privacy in order to get some other benefit, e.g. you can't offer to unlock some feature in return for more tracking

<comment><USER95> Example: How do you ask user for a permission to log access logs (which contain IP address) in the server, so that you can detect spam, ddos and other attacks? How do you store that consent information and what do you do if user doesn't consent? What do you do if user connecting from given IP address wants you to send him data you have collected about him. If people share IP addresses how do you know which log data is about which person?

<comment><USER128> Some entity runs a webserver. This entity has a legitimate business purpose in retaining access logs for e.g. 3 months for e.g. spam and security reasons. This entity just has to document that.

This entity can allow a 3rd party service to access these logs so that 3rd party can do whatever needs to be done if it is within the reasons the entity gave for having the data.

What neither can do is go use that data for anything other than the said purposes.

And if the given reasons are gratuitous and somehow the regulators notice, expect to get a nastygram and have to comply or face fines.

Basically what you can't do is collect data for longer than you have a legitimate need for, or cash-in and sell data you've collected. Basically, all said and done, just don't be sleezy and you'll be ok.

<comment><USER95> Who defines what is a legitimate business purpose? Let's say I comply with all that, but someone makes a complaint and particularly bitter civil servant judges that the collection is not legitimate, because he doesn't like the content of the website?

<comment><USER50> That's like arguing that we shouldn't have laws in case a cop is having a bad day and follows you around writing tickets. This is a legal process like anything else: your standard should be what you're comfortable defending in court. Being able to show a good faith decision process, compliance with common industry practice, etc. are going to help the case that any lapse was unintentional.

If your angry ex is hired by a regulator you'd appeal it but there's no reason to think that's a common problem.

<comment><USER95> But appeal might take forever and by the time it is resolved you file for bankruptcy because the fine ruined the cash flow. I've seen in it many times in the EU, for example in Poland. Civil servants are immune from taking responsibility and if you manage to get any compensation you'll find yourself spending years in courts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER142> >Every company and every project or hobby ever has to be compliant with the law.

wrong.

if everyone always followed the laws, earth would still be considered flat (at least until more recently).

<comment><USER66> > and every project or hobby ever

But, in particular, that's wrong because personal projects are exempt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER143> Thank you (the author) for this.

</comment><comment><USER144> I can't help but love the turmoil GDPR is causing in the adtech "industry". Like wasps buzzing around the exterminator who's about to destroy their nest.

<comment><USER122> When people losing their jobs due to government overreach makes you happy, check your motivations.

<comment><USER145> People keeping their jobs is not the most important thing one should strive for with no regards to anything else. Especially not in tech, where it's more than likely that it won't really hurt them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER146> GDPR is a beautiful thing.

</comment><comment><USER147> The GDPR hysteria demonstrates that:

1\. Many people (even "rational hacker-types" ha-ha!) do not take the time to research, analyze or understand the regulations and laws that affect them.

2\. Many people, even though they don't understand said regulations, will have an extreme negative reaction to the new regulation especially when they see big scary numbers like numbers like "$20M Euro". This is true even of regulations like the GDPR which most anybody should be able to read and understand in a couple of hours.

3\. Many people don't understand where regulations come from or how they work. They have no understanding of scope, process, judegement criteria or enforcement vectors. This leads to terrifying visions of "EU cops" waiting at airports to arrest people the moment they get off the plane.

Frankly, the whole situation speaks to the profound ignorance and fear that lies at the heart of the modern nation state. Citizens do not understand the government, they have no understanding of how or why it does what it does, all they really understand is that the government can and will completely ruin them should they violate one the tens of thousands of laws and rules and regulations and decrees that modern governments impose on their domains.

This ignorance has real consequences and costs. You can see this now particularly in Britain where many people are now learning how their country actually works _after_ voting to tear down their current regulatory and economic framework. But you can also see it in all the fear and the moaning and the teeth gnashing every time some new regulation is proposed. (The funny thing here is that even the most hardcore libertarian economists are coming to understand that regulation does not impede economic growth [1]. Indeed there's ample evidence that regulation, by imposing best practices on firms and increasing trust within the market, is a significant _driver_ of economic growth.)

The reason I point this out on HN is because I think, at the end of the day, being an entrepreneur or an investor is all about learning how the world really works and then changing the world to work for you. And while most people can perhaps afford to plod along with all sorts of misguided notions about how the world works because their jobs do not require them to have any real understanding of the big picture, entrepeneurs and investors absolutely cannot. Buffet says it best: _" Risk is not knowing what you're doing."_ The sites shutting down in the face of the GDPR out of fear and ignorance are making the most basic mistake, they literally do not know what they're doing.

[1] [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/fe...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/federal- regulation-not-cause-declining-dynamism.html)

<comment><USER122> I'm not sure about that paper. It's based on someone's research who works at the census bureau and a university professor. They're interest is also in making their employer look good.

Also the paper ends in "we also may be mis-measuring dynamism."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hear hear...

</comment><comment><USER148> Thanks for this post. I appreciate that you took the time to write this guide.

</comment><comment><USER149> I personally am not hysterical about any of this, I just am concerned for the citizens of the EU while living under this law. My main issue with the GDPR is that articles and supporters are constantly thinking in terms of "business" and not in terms of other services, and also not thinking in terms of long term impact.

For instance, I run a small community website (~30 people). I receive no income, and I know everyone involved. Everyone is in the United States. Is it open to the world? Yes, technically. What happens when an EU resident signs up? Well, I'll continue to do exactly the way things are currently set up.

How does this situation play out long term? First, I'll tell whomever contacts me that I am in compliance with US law, and I'm a US citizen. I do not have to follow their laws because it's not within my jurisdiction. Second, they will order me to block EU citizens from my site, which I will not do because it's a mandate of work on me for no reason by a foreign country.

So what happens in this situation? The only recourse for the EU is the internet version of "sanctions", to block my website from the EU.

Now they've set a really interesting precedent. How do they now enforce these blocks? Technical issues aside, are they going to do a whitelist or a blacklist? Regardless, they are setting up the equivalent of the Great Firewall for the purposes of maintaining the GDPR.

So why does this matter? It's only an isolated incident that will likely never occur, right?

Wrong. One community website like mine with one EU citizen that decides to file a GDPR complaint means that somehow this situation occurs. It can even be an intentional, "sign up, file complaint" immediately to trigger this legal situation. Think there aren't any foreign governments that wouldn't flood a system like this to censor the EU citizens in various mild ways? Think some random anarchist activist will not decide to monkey with the system by finding and reporting all the small violators?

The end product is a curation of the internet for EU citizens by EU government. Hopefully your leaders are benevolent, and nothing crazy happens in the democratic process. I remember being told during the Bush and Obama administrations that my views against government surveillance due to potential for abuse were unjustified because we could never have a horrible president and that our presidents will always be benevolent, so the policy would never change toward the worse. How did that play out? How do people think democracy functions, honestly?

Again, I really don't care too much. They can self censor if they want, but it really seems like GDPR is a win for Russian and Chinese meddling.

<comment><USER31> > For instance, I run a small community website (~30 people). I receive no > income, and I know everyone involved

You may be able to ignore GDPR compliance in your situation, as per article 2:

> This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data: [...] by > a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity; > [...]

There is some more information in recital 18, that says

> This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data by a > natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity and > thus with no connection to a professional or commercial activity.

So if you're not making money, and you're not established as a business you should be okay.

If you have any doubts or concerns, become compliant or ban all EU/EEA users.

<comment><USER149> That's an interesting statute. The problem is it can be interpreted in many ways. Your interpretation is how some may see it, however there are others as well.

For instance:

> by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity

First off, this isn't purely personal nor household activity. I serve others, not myself.

> and thus with no connection to a professional or commercial activity.

If the goal of the community is to help people develop professional skills (writing, for instance), couldn't that have a connection to professional activity? Also, I use this website as an example on my resume to bolster my own professional competence as a coder. That could qualify.

As always, laws are words that generally end up with the best paid lawyer's interpretations winning in court. It's a roll of the dice, that statute is not clear at all.

We're still debating the meaning of nearly all statutes in the US constitution 242 years later. Some in the legal community have declared "consensus" by case law, but even those end up getting changed and overturned all the time.</comment></comment></comment>