Brief Overview – GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the most important change in data privacy regulation in 20 years.

Arguably the biggest change to the regulatory landscape of data privacy comes with the extended jurisdiction of the GDPR, as it applies to all companies processing the personal data of data subjects residing in the Union, regardless of the company’s location. Previously, territorial applicability of the directive was ambiguous and referred to data process ‘in context of an establishment’. This topic has arisen in a number of high-profile court cases. GPDR makes its applicability very clear – it will apply to the processing of personal data by controllers and processors in the EU, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the EU or not. The GDPR will also apply to the processing of personal data of data subjects in the EU by a controller or processor not established in the EU, where the activities relate to: offering goods or services to EU citizens (irrespective of whether payment is required) and the monitoring of behaviour that takes place within the EU. Non-Eu businesses processing the data of EU citizens will also have to appoint a representative in the EU.

Anyone who collects and processes personal data (defined by the GDPR as a Data Controller) will be required to comply with the new regulations to a certain degree. As well as organisations who run websites or apps, this also includes any organisations who use internal databases, CRMs or even just plain old email. Under the GPDR a data subject has the right to erasure of their data. This means that if an individual asks you to remove their data from your systems you have to comply.

Consent

The conditions for consent have been strengthened, and companies will no longer be able to use long illegible terms and conditions full of legalese, as the request for consent must be given in an intelligible and easily accessible form, with the purpose for data processing attached to that consent. Consent must be clear and distinguishable from other matters and provided in an intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language. It must be as easy to withdraw consent as it is to give it.

Privacy by design

Privacy by design as a concept has existed for years now, but it is only just becoming part of a legal requirement with the GDPR. At its core, privacy by design calls for the inclusion of data protection from the onset of the designing of systems, rather than an addition. More specifically – ‘The controller shall implement appropriate technical and organisational measures in an effective way in order to meet the requirements of this Regulation and protect the rights of data subjects’. Article 23 calls for controllers to hold and process only the data absolutely necessary for the completion of its duties (data minimisation), as well as limiting the access to personal data to those needing to act out the processing.

Right to be forgotten

Also known as Data Erasure, the right to be forgotten entitles the data subject to have the data controller erase his/her personal data, cease further dissemination of the data, and potentially have third parties halt processing of the data. The conditions for erasure, as outlined in article 17, include the data no longer being relevant to original purposes for processing, or a data subjects withdrawing consent. It should also be noted that this right requires controllers to compare the subjects’ rights to “the public interest in the availability of the data” when considering such requests.

Distribution List: what data do we collect and how can I opt-in / opt-out?

The Folk Club only collects First Name, Second Name and email addresses from subscribers to our Distribution List which we manage via ‘Mailchimp’.

The primary function of the Distribution List is to allow us to contact our subscribers by email.

New subscribers can be added via forms embedded in the Folk Club website, or via links to landing pages created using ‘Mailchimp’.

Once subscribed, subscribers can change their user info, or unsubscribe from the ‘Distribution List’ at any time, links for these purposes can be found on all messages sent to our ‘Distribution List’.

Organisation News

When you sign up to our distribution list we only need to know your full name and e-mail address. This allows our database to automate an email to your email address in your name. You do not need to provide us with any other personal data, and we will never ask you for this. Your name and email address will NOT be given out to anyone. Your name and email address will be held on our host server, which you can automatically delete in full at any time by clicking unsubscribe in the footer of any of our regular communications.

Email Contact Form: what data do we collect and how is it protected?

When you send us an email using these forms, we only ask you for basic information about you. This information is only used to return the email, it may be kept on our contact database, but it will not be copied to any third-party database. This basic information is archived in Cruden Bay Folk Club’s contact list which is managed by the organisation administrator and can be removed at any time by using the Opt-out option.

Our forms are ‘Captcha’ configured. Captcha is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” Captcha is a type of challenge response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human. The test does not check the ability to give correct answers to questions, only how closely answers resemble those a human would give. In compliance with Spam, we use Captcha on our email form, it protects ‘everyone’ from Spam.

If you don’t want to fill out our forms with your data, you can optionally click on the email hyper-link on the contact page and send us an email.

Performer Opt-in / Opt-out

We appreciate the contributions made by all of those who provide content for our website.

By sending content to the webmaster for inclusion in our online activities, you will be agreeing to that content being used for the aforementioned purposes and affectively Opting-In.

We also appreciate that contributors have the right to decide whether their submissions can be used on our website or not.

If at any point you wish to Opt-Out, and have your content you removed from the website, please make the request by email to [email protected]

Cookies: what are they and how do they affect me?

From 26 May 2018 the GDPR General Data Protection Regulation requires Cruden Bay Folk Club to gain the consent of its users to download cookies on to their machines. Cruden Bay Folk Club currently do not use cookies on its website and will not be able to track your visit or activity. If this changes, our Privacy Policy will be updated to reflect the change.

Google Analytics

Cruden Bay Folk Club may use Google Analytics on its website. Google Analytics is a web analytics service provided by Google. Google Analytics collects (first party cookies), which are text files placed on your computer to collect standard Internet log information and visitor IP behaviour. This information is sent to Google and is used to evaluate activity on our website. This enables Cruden Bay Folk Club to monitor statistical reports. Cruden Bay Folk Club does not have the ability to collect any (PII) personally identifiable information of visitors to our website. Google Analytics doesn’t identify who you are, nor can it identify you or (PII), it simply tracks your activity on our website.

HTTPS / Security and SSL

HTTPS

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’.

SSL Certificate

When installed on a web server, it activates the padlock and the https protocol and allows secure connections from a web server to a browser. Typically, SSL is used to secure credit card transactions, data transfer – logins, web forms, and more recently is becoming the norm when securing browsing of social media sites. After the secure connection is made, the session key is used to encrypt all transmitted data.

Why do we have SSL?

The information you send on the Internet is passed from computer to computer to get to the destination server. Any computer in between you and the server can see your credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and other sensitive information if it is not encrypted with an SSL certificate.