GDPR: How will Europe's new data privacy rules affect US firms? (2)

Facebook is having quite the year. Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect today, jeopardizing the existence of Big Tech, social media giants like Facebook, and many other social media and marketing sites including data brokers. Many social media firms who rely on data collection are directly affected by this new legislation and exposed to great risk due to the new requirements. And they are not alone: biotech and healthcare companies who had to interrogate all of their contracts, systems, and processes for Safe Harbor have had to be nimble to adapt to the new way of working.

Companies will have to disclose data breaches to authorities within three days, or face crippling fines.

Any company that collects European data should both be on high alert and performing audits to avoid penalties. At the request of individuals, companies will also need to develop systems to be able to pull back all data relating to that person and erase it.

There are many unknowns:

• If certain individuals are more worried about data privacy than others, does that skew marketing datasets that suddenly lack that individual profile? For instance, if men in their 40s-50s reach out to have their information stricken, does that hurt the efficacy of sports, food, etc. marketing and affect precision marketing?
• Will the government be able to crack down on all companies and sites that collect data on individuals?
• What kinds of approvals will be granted for direct marketing going forward? Will it be like the non-smoking campaign and transparently say right on the ad, "We used your profile information to generate this ad, and think it's relevant based on your interests.

Read more here: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-gdpr-hit-list-who-stands-to-lose-from-europes-new-privacy-rules-facebook-google-data-protection/

Side note^ Politico optimized their link to include Facebook and Google for SEO purposes