The European Union’s new data protection laws came into effect on Friday, with Brussels saying the changes will protect consumers from being like “people naked in an aquarium”.
The EU’s so-called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been blamed for a flood of spam emails and messages in recent weeks as firms rush to request the explicit consent of users to contact them.
Even though the rules were officially adopted two years ago, with a grace period until now to adapt to them, companies have been slow to act, resulting in a last-minute scramble this week.
Britain’s data protection watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), said that its site had experienced “a few interruptions” as the deadline loomed, but said that “everything is working now”.
Brussels insists that the laws will become a global benchmark for the protection of people’s online information, particularly in the wake of the Facebook data harvesting scandal.
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Source: Seychelles News Agency
