GDPR and “opting-out” for good

Ground Labs explains GDPR

The internet serves as an excellent method of keeping up to date with news, products and current events. Occasionally you may be asked if you would like to subscribe to a mailing list or if you would like to become a recipient of a serial newsletter. This can be useful if you have a genuine interest in the subject matter and wish to keep up to date with their offering. However, from time to time these lists can become troublesome and constantly inundate your mailbox with irrelevant and annoying spam. When this happens you find yourself asking:

“Can I opt-out?”

When you choose to subscribe to an online mailing list, you usually have the option to “opt-out”, meaning that you can request to be removed from the mailing list and will no longer receive the unwanted correspondences.

If the company is reputable and offers a genuine advantage to being a subscriber to their lists, such as special reduced prices or useful information, then it might be worth handing over your email address.

"Who do you trust with your email address?"

But there is always the chance that you will be added to a list that becomes a target for a cascade of irritating spam emails.

Most people choose the option to “opt-out” when these spam emails begin to clog up their inboxes and this puts a halt to the spam problem. However, it is a little-known fact that if you do indeed choose to “opt-out”, you may have shuffled free of the constant spam emails but your personal data may remain in the list owner’s database.

In many cases, these mailing list holders retain your personal information and continue to circulate it recklessly. The GDPR will prevent these list holders from retaining subscriber’s personal data once they have elected to “opt-out”.

“GDPR gives you greater control of your personal data”

When the GDPR comes into law on the 25th of May 2018, these mailing list holders will be held accountable to fully delete and not retain any personal data that was requested under the Right to be Forgotten mandate, to be removed by subscribers that have “opted-out”. Organisations that rely on users personal data will need to make certain they have the correct solutions in place in order to deal with the incoming regulation. There are few solutions available that are as effective at dealing with Sensitive Data Discovery as Enterprise Recon. This tool was designed specifically to discover, monitor and remediate sensitive data within an organisation’s data storage environment, making it the ideal choice for adhering to data security standards.

With this new regulation being brought in by the European Union, people now have control over their personal information and how it can be used and who knows, is this the beginning of the end for spam emailing?