As of May 25th 2018, GDPR compliance is finally upon us…

Which means there are new rules I have to obey when it comes to protecting your data (especially in and around Europe).

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 is a new  regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union and the European Economic Area. And this is a particular problem for me because I have friends and family back in England who regularly check in on my web presence. And the last time I checked, England was still a part of Europe. Even despite their Brexit fiasco.

Apart from my English buddies, I may also have some of your data and have to be really clear about what I’m going to do with it, so here goes – hope you don’t mind the intrusion.

I don’t keep much data – your email and your phone number if you’ve given it to me.

And my websites use cookies to collect some anonymous information when you browse it or come to my Facebook page. Everyone does this these days. Even Google and Facebook help us to do so – it’s kind of standard practice.

If you’re a client, I’ll keep enough information to help service your needs, forward invoices and maybe take credit card details so I’m able to take your payments. Trust me, I have taken major precautions to guard your data from ever being stolen and I have procedures, insurances and contingencies in place to prevent ever being hacked anyway. So I can guarantee you’re pretty safe.

This is what I do with your information:

I’ll occasionally email you with information on new product lines, services and other things I think I can tempt you with. I’ll never spam you and you can easily unsubscribe at any time you like. And if you do that, I won’t ever email you again. (Unless of course you ask me to).

I will NEVER sell your information to anyone else (especially those Cambridge Analytica boys) and I’ll guard it closely with my life.

If you should come to my website at www.localadserv.com.au and allow it to use cookies (there’s a pop-up there to warn you), I with the help of Google, will track some basic information (traffic counters etc) and I might send you ads or even news that I think you’ll like.

Same with Facebook – if you ever come to my page or click on any of my stuff there, I might send you some ads. That’s how the facebook pixel works.

And that my friends is it, I don’t do anything else with your information.

I encourage you to read my policies in full, but here are some highlights of what’s changed:

• Added information to my Privacy Policy about the types of data that I collect, the ways in which I use it, and the measures I take to keep your data safe;
• Added a new Cookie Policy to provide more details about data collection and the choices available to you.

The updates to my policies will be posted and go fully into effect on May 26th, 2018. So guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow (better late than never).

Thank you for being on this journey with me.