The European Union is expected to announce in January 2012 that data protection guidelines across the region will be tightened to provide consumers with greater protection. The warning was given in a joint statement by EU Justice Commissioner,Viviane Reding and the German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner.
“In modernising the EU’s data protection rules, we believe that consumers must be more empowered than they are today. Users should be in control of their data,” the statement read. “This is why, in our view, EU law should require that consumers give their explicit consent before their data [is] used. And consumers generally should have the right to delete their data at any time, especially the data they post on the Internet themselves.”
Key to the new rules is an expected requirement to gain explicit and informed consent from individuals before storing their data, as well as informing them of what data will be stored, and how that information will be used. Consumers will also have the right to be “forgotten” on the Internet, and have all references to themselves removed.
Social Network addressed
The Reding/Aigner statement also sought to address emerging concerns around cloud computing and social networking, and how information stored in the cloud should be regulated. In a clear reference to companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google that often seek to harvest data from their users, the statement indicated those companies’ practices would face scrutiny as well. Reding and Aigner also said:
“We both believe that companies who direct their services to European consumers should be subject to EU data protection laws, ….. otherwise, they should not be able to do business on our internal market. This also applies to social networks with users in the EU. We have to make sure that they comply with EU law and that EU law is enforced, even if it is based in a third country and even if its data are stored in a ‘cloud’.”
Permission-based e-marketing
The “direction of travel” globally is now clearly being set on the path of permission being required before doing anything with data provided by a consumer – from their email address to their activities on a website. This will make the management of customer data more critical than ever as companies seek to find lower cost routes to market. Which is why Atrium’s MarketDeveloper v5 has been designed to support multiple levels of permissions across the marketing spectrum.
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