At last, the 25th May 2018 has passed and a little known acronym of a European Directive has come into force.
After weeks of panic from companies, being forced into asking us if we would like to hear from them, and having to write paragraphs of privacy statements to outline exactly what it is they will be doing with our information, and of course reminding us of our rights to request immediate deletion of that data. We are now in the post-apocalyptic era, a new Europe, a new World.
So now we are in Europe 2.0, the U.S aren’t quite sure what to make of it all, and I’m sitting here with weather somewhat comparable to a nuclear winter, despite 3 record breaking weeks of sunshine, in a country where every other word is Brexit (which shouldn’t be a word, but some OED hippies added it anyway) and I’m reflecting upon that last few months of insane marketing ploys and inbox overload.
I get GDPR, I like what it stands for, philosophically, not the literal letters, those can sod off. But I am utterly fed up, like most people of how it has been handled. Whilst some of the more hip companies out there have bothered to embrace modern culture and throw in a pun or two along the way, the underhandedness of almost every business, big and small to use out inboxes as a way of confusing us over whether we are opting in to opting out, or opting out of contact, or opting in to our information being shared to 3rd parties and who knows what other combinations, the lack of consistent messaging has really messed us around.
Quite honestly, I am pretty sure the vast majority of us, who have never really read all the terms and conditions of software or understand the direct debit agreement in full legal context, have just inadvertently signed ourselves up to years of inbox terror and torment.
My advice going forwards, forget the inbox, speak to people instead.