Your Data Privacy Rights

With GDPR regulations grabbing headlines, how is the world’s biggest company keeping your data safe?

- Alex Blake

Unless you’ve been living off-grid for the past few months, there’s no way you’ll have missed the fervent news coverage of GDPR. Short for the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR is the EU’s new law meant to govern the way companies handle your data, and your rights to know what information they hold on you.

Transgressors of the new law can be hit with hefty fines – up to 4% of a company’s worldwide annual turnover, or €20 million, whichever is higher – prompting a scramble among companies to get their affairs in order. You’ve almost certainly received emails asking you to resubscribe to email newsletters; these are motivated by GDPR.

So how exactly does GDPR affect you? And what is Apple doing to make sure your private info is safe? Let’s take a look.

What is GDPR?

GDPR is designed to make it easier for EU citizens to gain access to data that companies hold about them, and to have information removed if they so desire. This is addressed by the so-called ‘right to be forgotten’ provision in GDPR. This lets you request that a company delete any info it holds on you, providing there are no ‘legitimate grounds’ for holding it. An example is given by the European Commission (EC) of a child entering data about themselves on a website without fully understanding the consequences, then having to live with those consequences for the rest of their life. In cases like that, the EC says, a right to be forgotten is particularly important.