Data protection

The deadline for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is approaching. The law takes effect on Friday, which is when any personal data stored within the EU has to adhere to standards of privacy that sends companies like Google, Apple and Facebook into cold sweats.

Even if you are physically outside the EU, and you think you only interact with non-EU companies, it’s a good bet that your data has passed through the entity, and that’s enough to get the companies in question to update their terms of service to appear to comply with the law, while they work out ways to circumvent its intent and continue to sell it to anyone who’ll pay for it.

This means that you (and I) have been recently deluged with emails from the tech/publishing/retail world and his wife reminding us that they have our data and inviting us to “update” our privacy settings. I’ve mostly run through the exercise without paying too much attention to the vehicle. However, the one I got from this crowd (who put on a possibly dubious Web Summit in Lisbon, and occasionally email to inform me that one or the other of their staff is planning on being in San Francisco and would love to have coffee with me) led to an opt-out screen that is just a little slanted in its presentation: