GDPR Compliance - Tell EU users not to sign up I have a client that wants to approach GDPR compliance by simply putting a notice on his subscription forms along the lines of "Don't sign up, Europeans" From what I gather about GDPR compliance, I'm pretty sure that won't pass muster. Correct?
I'm not aware of any cases on point, but as a rule legal fig-leaves don't play well in court. If the webmaster simply puts up a banner saying that EU residents are not permitted but takes no other action to exclude them, then that is going to be considered irrelevant. The webmaster is still very likely required to comply with the GDPR. On the other hand if the webmaster takes other steps to exclude EU residents, such as using a geolocation service to block connections known to be in the EU, validating email addresses and blocking those from EU domains, and ejecting anyone who mentions that their residence is in the EU, then that is more likely to be seen as a good-faith attempt to avoid being subject to the GDPR. It will also have the practical effect of greatly reducing the number of actual EU residents. All these controls can be evaded, but it would be much harder for any data subjects to claim that they acted in good faith or that the webmaster acted in bad faith. Note that validating an email address or logging an IP is itself processing of personal data, so anyone implementing such a system still can't ignore the GDPR completely, but it would greatly limit the scope and make it easy to delete any such data after a short time. (Note: the term &quot;EU resident&quot; above is an approximation of the territorial scope).
It doesn’t make you exempt from the GDPR if that’s what you’re asking The hash you produce is linked to one (or a small number) of computers and it therefore serves as an ID number. Because that ID number is linked to the owner of the computer it is personal information and if you are collecting it, you must comply with the requirements of the GDPR - valid legal reason, deletion when no longer required, deletion on request, data security etc.
The CEO wants to "fool" users You are essentially admitting that the company you are working for is about to deceit its customers and asking whether that is legal. The relevant set of laws is rather sparse and does not give direct answers in regards to oAuth tokens or other details of that level (which is probably making your CEO think he can "handle" the arising questions). Probably the most relevant bit of legislation that applies here is The Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. §§41-58) which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices and has been applied to online privacy and data security policies. I am pretty sure that, in practice, if the users take your company to court, it will be held liable because: users are allowing us to read their CRM data and once we get the data, the data become ours, and we can do whatever we want with it. Is this true? While the users are still allowing you to read their data it is completely up to the Terms/EULA what you can do with it. However, once you have made the users think that they have withdrawn your access (e.g. they "deleted" oAuth tokens), you are no longer authorized to read the current data (although the Terms may still allow you to use the old data you obtained when you had access). Silently continuing to access their data without their knowledge/approval is definitely a deceit. The CEO wants us to download all of their emails and store them in our database There would be nothing wrong with that if it was in the Terms. But if it is not, that would be a blatant (and easily punishable) breach of privacy. Note that you may also be held personally liable for this wrongdoing (if/when proved so). "Just doing your job" claim will not work.
I spent a few years working in and around the Energy industry - including a stint working at a supplier, I'm no longer there so unfortunately I no longer have access to the email chains I had discussing this with legal. The consensus at the time was that a "traditional" i.e. non-half-hourly (NHH), non-smart meter reading itself was not considered personal data - they are conceptually tied to a metering point (which may or may not be a physical meter), not to an individual and don't represent an individual's energy consumption (the granularity of the reading is insufficient to tell anything about the usage profile) But this information, while all around the implementation of GDPR it was a couple of years back and to be honest it was bugging me that I might be out-of-date on the current practices so I reached out to a former colleague who was the Data Protection Officer at the supplier I worked at to try and get a more up-to-date take. He's since moved on but was there until recently so has more experience with the topic since GDPR actually went into effect. I asked him whether a) estimated opening reads were considered "personal data" and b) what would happen with a request to change one under article 16 and he had this to say, I've translated industry-speak in square brackets: a) for NHH ["Non Half Hourly" - meters that are read ad-hoc, essentially all non-smart domestic meters will be this] an estimated reading wasn't personal data automatically until the billing flag was set in CRM and those would be the only ones we'd include on an SAR [Subject Access Request], any others are internal data not personal. HH ["Half Hourly" - meters for higher consumption users, typically larger business premises are billed on increments for each half hour so have readings for each] and remote [smart meter] readings are always personal for domestic and microb [micro-businesses are a certain class of non-domestic energy customer see condition 7A] b) erm no! we'd only change it if the value in CRM didn't match the value in the D10 [industry Data Flow used to transmit meter reads] for some reason. if they match it's an accurate representation of what we estimate the reading to be so it's just a vanilla billing dispute not a data protection issue so i'd have punted it to [name of person who was head of metering] From that it would sound as though the estimated read would count as personal data - so long as it's being used for billing purposes, but that doesn't mean they have to accept your read in it's stead. It all comes down to accuracy - GDPR requires that personal data be "accurate" but provides no definition as to what "accurate" means (which makes sense since you can't give a one-size-fits-all answer that isn't an encyclopedia) and while The Electricity Directive 2019 confirms the need for accuracy in billing again it doesn't tell us what that means. The implementation is left to member state regulators. In the UK this is OFGEM and all opening meter readings are validated through third parties (so you don't end up with the foxes guarding the hen house!) and are calculated using the following formula: Last validated reading for the meter point &lt;= supplied reading &lt;= (expected daily usage x number of days since last validated reading x 2.5) where "expected daily usage" is obtained from a database maintained by the regulator - it's calculated off meter type, property type, property use, previous validated reads etc. So if the customer provides a reading that falls outside the above the supplier can (and in practice invariably will) reject it as being inaccurate. Now this is why the when a meter reading is provided matters - reads you provide are always assumed to be the read on the day you give them. With opening reads there's some leeway, I can't remember the official rule on how much but usually they give you up to the next estimated read is generated but more on that later. Now if the reading you're trying to submit is a "now" reading and it's failed the validation criteria and you aren't happy with the rejection you can force the issue by demanding the supplier come read the meter. You don't say how long has passed since the opening read - more than the week from what you've said so presumably at least a month (guessing you've had at least your first bill). Now if they are saying the opening read was X (based on the estimated usage) and you're it should have been X + Y and the current reading is X + Y + Z you want to pay your actual usage Z not Y + Z. What you need to do is dispute the opening read, which you're entitled to do, arguably GDPR of Article 16 gives you this right, but on it's own it's a weak argument. There's established means by which an estimated read's "accuracy" is determined and assuming they followed that they're going to just tell you that as far as they are concerned it is accurate. Any challenge to that accuracy is going to have to be done within the legal/regulatory frameworks for assessing accuracy, that's what they're there for, if they won't accept your reading escalate that to the regulator - and as soon as you can. OFGEM for example allow disputing of opening reads for 12 months - it doesn't have to be resolved within that 12 months it just has to be lodged with them within that time. If you try and use the GDPR angle to pursue this IMHO it's going to muddy the waters and not help you get what you need - pursue this on billing accuracy.
The GDPR does indeed require that the password be stored "securely". It does not specify the technology which must be used for that purpose. Hashing the PW is a common method, and should be sufficient if properly implemented (strong hash function, use of salt, etc). But other methods of securing the password might be sufficient. Encrypting the PW rather than hashing it, so that an authorized person could decrypt it temporarily might be OK. Or perhaps a security app can separately retrieve only the specified characters of the PW through some sort of encryption. Or perhaps the ISP is not using proper security. In the case of Knuddles in the linked news story, an actual breach occurred which led to the poor security being reported. You could send a report to the appropriate national Data Protection Authority.
Don't collect or process personal data Many (though of course not all) websites can easily be run without collecting or otherwise processing any personal data. The position of GDPR is that if you are not able to fulfil the basic, simplest core conditions for processing personal data (understanding what you're processing and why and why it's allowed, describing it in a privacy policy, having a non-underage person who's responsible for that) then you are not allowed to process personal data of other people. So don't. Build your website so that any personal data are not collected.
The GDPR doesn't generally distinguish public from non-public personal data. If you have a good reason to contact the professor, do send them an email. GDPR does not prevent this. If you're sending this email for “purely personal or household purposes”, then GDPR doesn't apply anyway. There are rules in the ePrivacy Directive against unsolicited emails, but these specifically relate to emails for direct marketing purposes. A company is not allowed to send out spam marketing, regardless of whether they obtained the email address from a public data source. Companies can send email marketing to their own existing customers, or to people who have given consent. Consent is defined in a fairly restrictive way (as a specific, informed, freely given, and unambiguous indication of the data subject's wishes), so that mere publication of an email address cannot be interpreted as consent to receive marketing from a particular company.
I think haveibeenpwned would be legal in the EU because it carries out a task in the public interest (Art. 6(1)(e)), and it shares no more data then necessary, for example you can search for a password, but it would not show you the emailaddress which belongs to that password. It would also be legal for you to hold a copy of a leaked database, but only if you have a legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) to have it. Being a security company does not change that, but finding a legitimate interest might be easier. If you have a legitimate interest to hold a copy of a leaked database, it does not mean you can use it in any way you like. For example testing if the password still works, is very likely illegal everywhere in the EU. But I'm not familiar with the UK laws.