Will Stack Exchange EU terms still apply to Britain now that BREXIT has finished? Background Information Britain has recently finished BREXIT (after years of painstaking decision making about pretty much nothing) and I was wondering whether Stack Exchange's EU specific terms still apply to Britain. Example of EU specific terms If you are located within the European Union, you must be at least 16 years old to access or use the Network or Services, including without limitation to complete a Stack Overflow Account Registration. By accessing or using the Services or the Network in any manner, you represent and warrant that you are at least 16 years of age. If you are under 16 years old, you may not, under any circumstances or for any reason, access or use the Services or Network in any manner, and may not provide any personal information to or on the Services or Network (including, for example, a name, address, telephone number or email address). Questions Do Stack Exchange's EU specific terms still apply to Britain? If so, will they ever stop applying to Britain?
No. The UK is no longer in the EU, and the terms of service, which are probably drafted poorly, fail to include non-EU countries that are subject to EU law, such as Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway. This oversight means that the UK is also not included as of the beginning of February 2020 when it ceased to be a member of the European Union.
No, it is not illegal in UK to use proxies. No, it is not like the tor concept. No, the ISP does not slow you down (they mostly throttle detectable p2p connections), but if you use public proxies, many of them will be unacceptably slow. Note: for things like facebook, a proxy is utterly useless. You already donated your private data to them, there's nothing to hide.
Your boss is totally wrong. Legally, there is no such thing as a "probation period" in the UK. You have the right to your holiday payment, according to the days that you worked. What can happen: The legal minimum is I think 28 days per year including bank holidays, but most companies give 23 or 24 days PLUS eight days bank holiday. Your contract may say that the first three months are called probation period, and during that time you only get the legal minimum, and after that the much more common higher amount. That would be legal. But even so, you would be entitled to seven days, minus any bank holidays where you didn't work.
Yes, there would still be an obligation to comply with erasure requests – if the data subject can be identified, and if the GDPR applies. This is a case for Art 11 GDPR: processing which does not require identification. The pastebin site is not required to collect identifying info just in order to facilitate later deletion. If the site is unable to identify the data subjects, then the data subject rights (like access, rectification, erasure, restriction, or data portability) do not apply. Other rights like the right to be informed and the right to object do remain, though. But if the data subject provides sufficient additional information that makes it possible to identify their records, then the data subject rights apply again. In practice, this is likely going to mean that anyone with access to a paste will be able to request deletion, since the site would have no ability to verify the identity of the data subject beyond the information in the paste. None of this absolves the site from implementing appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure the security of this data. Even though the pastes might not be directly identifying, they are personal data and are far from anonymous. Common practices like numbering pastes with a sequential ID or showing recent pastes on a homepage have to be viewed critically. My go-to recommendation is to assign a cryptographically random UUIDv4 ID to the post, so that it is practically impossible for anyone to find the paste unless they were given a link by the uploader. Your idea to delete pastes after a fairly short retention period is also good. This helps with security, and it is in line with the GDPR's data minimization and storage limitation principles: data may only be kept as long as necessary for its purpose. On the other hand, quick deletion might not be in line with the purpose of these pastes – it all depends on context. You mention that this is an US-based site. If so, there's a question whether GDPR would even apply. GDPR will apply per Art 3(2) if the data controller is offering its services to people who are in Europe. Here, “offering” does not mean mere availability of the website, but that the data controller intends the service to be used by such people, in particular if the service is somehow targeted or marketed to such people.
This would not be "legal jeopardy" per-se, really the only remedy that Stack Exchange would have in a case like this would be to ban both accounts. It would be different if you caused SE some kind of monetary/reputation damages to the site itself. From SE's Acceptable Use Policy: Identity Theft and Privacy. Users that misleadingly appropriate the identity of another person are not permitted. It seems your described scheme would violate that term. But this isn't a legal problem, just an operational one. You aren't violating any law (unless there are local laws against this) by paying somebody to "be you" on SE. The most that this would earn you and your cohort would be a ban and probably removal of the contributions.
Per Art 3(2), GDPR only applies to non-European companies when their processing activities relate to the offering of goods or services to people in Europe, or when the processing activities relate to monitoring people in Europe. However, the word “offer” of this targeting criterion requires some level of intent. It is not enough for GDPR to apply that they're marketing to someone who happens to be in Europe, but GDPR would apply if they are intentionally marketing to people who are in Europe. I don't know what they are marketing, so I don't know if that would be the case here. Even if GDPR were to apply, it would not be the most appropriate law. Yes, there's the GDPR right to erasure, which applies under some conditions (though there's a pretty absolute right to opt-out from marketing). The EU's ePrivacy Directive provides more specific rules though, in particular that every such marketing email must offer a way to unsubscribe. Other countries have comparable anti-spam laws, potentially also the home country for this online service.
There is a general EU anti-discrimination directive 2000/43 which in Article 3(1)(h) which applies the standards to housing. This document analyzes Czech anti-discrimination law. If you were discriminated against on the basis of being English, that could support legal action. There is no current EU or Czech legislation that guarantees a right to operate in the language of your choice. There have been calls to create some such legislation. Such legislation would be the implementation of Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, which says that Any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited. There is under Article 9 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages a right to use regional or minority languages in judicial proceedings, but there is no generic "right to use your own language". There are occasional cases where governments are sued because their actions linguistically discriminate. As observed here, there was a case in Belgium where the government was sued for not subsidizing French education in non-French territories, but the court said that "Art. 14 cannot be interpreted as guaranteeing children or parents a right to obtain instruction in a language of his choice".
Neither of those clauses has anything to do with whether a tax on the use of Whatsapp is legal: The first clause tells users that they are responsible for any taxes that may be owed. It says nothing about whether such a tax is or is not legal. The second clause says that users may not charge for Whatsapp services. It says nothing about whether the government may impose a tax for the use of the services. That is all beside the point, though. Even if the TOS explicitly said, "No one may tax the use of our services," that would have no legal effect. Saying that you're exempt from taxation does not make you exempt from taxation.