Has your email inbox been flooded with dozens of notices about “privacy policy updates” recently?
If so, this is likely the result of the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into force in less than four weeks time on 25th May 2018.
It provides long overdue protections for the data of EU citizens and places legally-enforceable responsibilities on businesses that process this data. Zamzar strongly supports this new regulation since it will provide better transparency and protection for your data, values that are already at the centre of what we do.
What is GDPR?
Much ink has been spilled attempting to explain GDPR, but at a high-level:
- GDPR is a new EU regulation that replaces national-level EU privacy and security laws with a single, all-encompassing EU-wide law. It regulates how businesses like ours gather, use, share and transfer personal data.
- It is likely to affect most companies (hence your bulging inbox). The regulation is not limited to companies based in the EU, since it is concerned with where personal data comes from – if it originates from within the EU it is covered.
- Crucially it strengthens protections for you as an end user of Internet services. It means Facebook can’t absent-mindedly lose control of the data for 87 million users, and Eldon Insurance can’t use your car insurance data for political advertising without consequences.
If you’d like to read more about the technicalities of GDPR there are handy overviews from both BBC news and Wired. The UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO) provides a meaty 162-page guide to GDPR and if you want to go direct to source you can read all 99 Articles of the GDPR directly on the main EU legal site.
What is Zamzar doing about GDPR?
Along with many other companies we are putting the finishing touches to our GDPR compliance, and will be publishing more information over the coming weeks.
In the meantime here is an overview of our plans:
- We will be fully GDPR compliant by the implementation deadline of 24th May 2018.
- We are currently working on updates to our terms and privacy policies which will be made available to users for review in the coming weeks.
- We are reviewing relationships with 3rd party vendors to ensure that any Data Processors we use are fully GDPR compliant.
- On our main file conversion website we are reviewing relationships with 3rd party advertisers to offer stronger protections for user data when serving advertising.
- We are taking steps to further enhance internal security measures to provide even stronger protection for your data. For example we recently rolled out “at rest” encryption for files processed through our Developer API. We will be posting updates about these measures in coming weeks too.
- Where a customer deems us to act as a “Data Processor” for their data we will be providing an extra “Data Processing Agreement/Addendum (DPA)” to ensure customers can meet their own GDPR commitments. If you would like to be provided with this agreement please contact us at info@zamzar.com.
In short, GDPR helps us to build on top of practices that have been at the core of what we do since we started Zamzar over 10 years ago. Our business prospers when we can competently, securely, quickly and professionally assist with your file conversion needs. We don’t need or want to trade your personal data to stay in business, nor have we ever sought to do so.
When will I hear more from Zamzar?
We will be posting further updates here on our blog and our Twitter and Facebook pages over the coming 4 weeks. In the meantime if you have any further questions related to our GDPR compliance please do get in touch with us at info@zamzar.com.
Happy secure converting!
The Zamzar Team.
