Is GDPR going to affect us?

jimbobo2779 said:

The only way for a company to skirt these laws and get away with it is if they are incorporated outside the EU, keep their data outside the EU and don't intend on dealing with companies within the EU. Any company within the EU will have to ensure that any partner company that handles any amount of customer information will abide by the GDPR rules (with regards to information, where it is stored and how it is handled). So in essence there are ways that companies will be able to ignore this if they are outside the EU but in a lot of cases it will result in a drastic reduction in that company's potential for earning money and that will likely drive the rest of the world to simply accept this

Click to expand...

No. Seriously. You have to pause for a moment and remember the concept of borders. Laws of a country are only valid within the borders of said country.

The reason FB, Google etc will/do cooperate is that they operate by using subsidiary legal entities that are founded in the EU. In other words, the commission cannot fine Google US, but can certainly fine Google Ireland. That's the only reason these companies will comply.

The commission can not do anything to Joe ltd if Joe ltd doesn't have an EU subsidiary to get fined. And the vast majority of US companies do not.

ExperimentalSEO said:

If you don't have any physical presence within the EU you can ignore EU law and nothing will happen.

Click to expand...

Except for trying to do business with EU partners. All payment processors, emailers, marketers in general will have no way of not dealing with GDPR. That is just three examples that are directly affected by this.

It is very short sighted to think this isn't going to affect every person on the internet eventually.

jimbobo2779 said:

Except for trying to do business with EU partners. All payment processors, emailers, marketers in general will have no way of not dealing with GDPR. That is just three examples that are directly affected by this.

It is very short sighted to think this isn't going to affect every person on the internet eventually.

Click to expand...

I have no plans of following GDPR even if I deal with businesses and customers in the EU. There is nothing that the EU can do to me for not following it and there isn't even a way for them to know I follow it.

jazzc said:

No. Seriously. You have to pause for a moment and remember the concept of borders. Laws of a country are only valid within the borders of said country.

The reason FB, Google etc will/do cooperate is that they operate by using subsidiary legal entities that are founded in the EU. In other words, the commission cannot fine Google US, but can certainly fine Google Ireland. That's the only reason these companies will comply.

The commission can not do anything to Joe ltd if Joe ltd doesn't have an EU subsidiary to get fined. And the vast majority of US companies do not.

Click to expand...

If you don't intend on dealing with companies within the EU then you may be fine for now but there are a lot of customers and businesses in the EU that may refuse to deal with a non-compliant company. My offline business is one such business that has already had to shift a few providers of services due to non-compliance, they are not interested in GDPR, when they realise they are losing customers directly as a response I would assume they will either take up to a 30% cut in income or comply.

jimbobo2779 said:

Except for trying to do business with EU partners.

Click to expand...

In what sense? You mean your EU partners will refuse to do business with you?

jimbobo2779 said:

If you don't intend on dealing with companies within the EU then you may be fine for now but there are a lot of customers and businesses in the EU that may refuse to deal with a non-compliant company. My offline business is one such business that has already had to shift a few providers of services due to non-compliance, they are not interested in GDPR, when they realise they are losing customers directly as a response I would assume they will either take up to a 30% cut in income or comply.

Click to expand...

If you have a product or service people want they wont check to see if a company follows GDPR or not.

ExperimentalSEO said:

I have no plans of following GDPR even if I deal with businesses and customers in the EU. There is nothing that the EU can do to me for not following it and there isn't even a way for them to know I follow it.

Click to expand...

Good luck fella, I genuinely wish you the best. Lots of businesses will be unaffected outside of the EU, lots will be slightly affected and lots will see profits nose dive as a result (of non-compliance).

Profits won't drop because of non-compliance, in fact they will increase because there is less regulation to deal with as compared to the EU companies.

ExperimentalSEO said:

Profits won't drop because of non-compliance, in fact they will increase because there is less regulation to deal with as compared to the EU companies.

Click to expand...

That really depends on what you want to do.

For example, the company my wife works at have had to switch a few different service providers from non-compliant companies to compliant companies. The non-compliant companies are outside of the EU and don't think the GDPR will affect them, I know they have lost at least 1 contract as a direct result of this. 1 contract may not be much but how many other companies within the EU are in the same boat?

One of the companies she moved away from was an emailing company, she had to move away because they weren't compliant and felt it was not an issue for them as they were outside the EU. The Wife's company is unable to deal with them and stay within the guidelines of the GDPR so dropped them without hesitation and is now choosing Aweber or Mailchimp.

I am not saying all companies will be affected by this but ignoring GDPR and hoping it will automatically make you more desirable to more customers than those that outright cannot work with you is probably misguided.

I could be wrong in this but I have spoken with numerous companies in my small town and lots of them have had to switch their business relationships around as a result of this. Most of these companies are small fry but the bigger guys are going through the same process just on a bigger scale.

B2B is not the same as B2C. A consumer is not going to check to determine if the company they are buying from is following GDPR or not following GDPR.

The company that your wife works at is the disadvantaged one as it cannot collect and store information on people in EU.

ExperimentalSEO said:

B2B is not the same as B2C. A consumer is not going to check to determine if the company they are buying from is following GDPR or not following GDPR.

The company that your wife works at is the disadvantaged one as it cannot collect and store information on people in EU.

Click to expand...

I'll take the first point but claim the contrary on the second part. We are in the EU we have no choice but to be compliant and as such cannot work with non-compliant companies when any amount of information is to be passed on.

Her company is disadvantaged in that she needs to ensure compliancy but after that it is just a slightly different way of doing business, thankfully for her it won't extend too much past that point as she sells fairly large ticket items to a limited number of customers.

We are in the EU so will be compliant by May 25th, all of our partners will be compliant also so we will continue business but we, and others I have talked with about this, have all had to kick at least 1 company (each) to the curb so they are the disadvantaged ones as there are always alternatives to those non-compliant services.

Just to clarify; we will not be losing business over this, some non-compliant services already have lost business over this.

You can fake compliance by splitting up the business into separate sectors that all collect small amounts of data, while any data collected by the primary company is following GDPR.

ExperimentalSEO said:

You can fake compliance by splitting up the business into separate sectors that all collect small amounts of data, while any data collected by the primary company is following GDPR.

Click to expand...

If you're non-EU (and no subsidiaries there), you don't have to fake anything. You can just **claim** that you are with zero consequences. The equivalent EU company though is in for heavy consequences if they falsely claim to be. Hence, they are in a disadvantage.

jazzc said:

No. Seriously. You have to pause for a moment and remember the concept of borders. Laws of a country are only valid within the borders of said country.

The reason FB, Google etc will/do cooperate is that they operate by using subsidiary legal entities that are founded in the EU. In other words, the commission cannot fine Google US, but can certainly fine Google Ireland. That's the only reason these companies will comply.

The commission can not do anything to Joe ltd if Joe ltd doesn't have an EU subsidiary to get fined. And the vast majority of US companies do not.

Click to expand...

I've been on reddit looking at GDPR, and nearly every post out of hundreds ignores the concept of national sovereignty.