EU to Tighten Privacy Standards
EU Justice Commissioner Vivianne Redding and the German Federal Minister for Consumer Protection, Ilse Aigner, recently announced upcoming changes to EU privacy law that would require U.S. companies like Facebook to meet stricter privacy standards. These changes would require service subscribers to explicitly allow the use of their data and have the ability to delete data held by companies about them.
Redding says "consumers generally should have the right to delete their data at any time, especially the data they post on the Internet themselves". Only some of the data held by social media companies is data posted on the Internet - or typed in - by consumers. Most of the data is behavioral or derived, meaning our actions online are tracked, and multiple points of data are analyzed to determine what we are likely to do, buy, or say. What data will we not be allowed to delete?
We'll have to wait until the official changes are adopted and announced, but the draft strategy does mention "when surfing online, and should have the "right to be forgotten" when their data is no longer needed or they want their data to be deleted". Hopefully this signals an understanding of the privacy implications of these data.
The proposed changes are similar to the requirements imposed by the FTC settlements for Facebook and Google, although the Facebook settlement isn't official yet. The EU privacy law does have a higher bar regarding consent to use personal data and more control over deleting data managed by companies.
image from: http://blog.tuvpn.com/tag/protecting-internet-privacy/page/3/
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