Ask HN: GDPR in 2022 – What do I need to know as a solo founder?

A lot of the GDPR tracking stuff is only applicable for anonymous users. Once someone creates an account and accepts the ToS, it's a different relationship. Tracking is fine, GDPR becomes more concerned with data safety.

This is why freemium products are so important. In this future, your marketing should be a sledgehammer with one focus - get people to create accounts. Once people have accounts, then you can do all sorts of analysis to find your product's value prop/customer journey mapping/etc.

Europe is also not a big software market, and they are increasingly protectionist.

Also, from personal experience, European business partners are much nastier/cutthroat to deal with.

> As a market, it's not worth the risk until it's worth the legal advice.

i think that is a calculation only op can make. the european union covers over 400 million people. making some early design decisions in what data you collect, how you store it, for a lot of people is an acceptable cost to open up to such a large quantity of people.

in fact, it think advising a founder that is bootstrapping their business that the only "reasonable" course of action is to exclude large swathes of the developed world is frankly, misguided.

I think the truth is that we don't know. There have been rulings that seem to go as far as saying that an American company can be compelled by the US government to share information against GDPR rules so no American company can ever be compliant - not even if they set up an EU subsidiary which nominally controls the data and all the data is hosted in the EU because that American company could simply override their EU subsidiary. Even if you're hosting in the EU, is the company an American one that might be compelled to use their control of the servers to hand over your data?

Yes, if you're using Google Analytics and Google Fonts, you'll need to get permission from each user before loading any of that. Those services are used to track users around the internet and for marketing/ad purposes within Google.

I actually think it's near impossible to make something "GDPR compliant." For example, let's say that you try to do all the right things - trying to be as strict as possible. You put up a cookie banner that has both "accept" and "deny". Molly presses "accept". Two days later, Jane is using the same computer. Jane didn't accept. You're now tracking Jane who did not consent.

I think showing a good-faith approach and genuine caring about user data will go a long way with regulators (but IANAL so don't take that as advice). Things like Google Fonts/Analytics are easy targets because we know they leak data to Google. If you're hosting a MySQL database on Azure, theoretically the US government could get a search warrant and serve it to Microsoft and get access to your database. I personally think regulators should be focusing on the rampant bad-faith compliance targets rather than "well, technically maybe the US government could do X." Websites are putting up "Accept all" and "Manage choices" buttons where you'd have to spend an hour opting out. C'mon, that shows such a blatant disregard for user's rights. Having a database hosted on Azure that the US government could technically get a warrant to search your database and because Microsoft is a US company they'd have to give them access is certainly something that could happen, but such an unlikely vector compared to someone embedding GIPHY and now Facebook knows all the page views.

Realistically, if the EU pushes too far, the US is going to say "you can't ban US companies from the internet in Europe." If the EU seriously said that you couldn't use Azure because Microsoft is a US company (or any other US company), I'm guessing the US would take it to the WTO (World Trade Organization) and it'd likely be considered in violation of trade treaties. There's a certain amount of local rules and regulations you can put in place and some might have a protectionist impact on foreigners, but outright banning foreign companies wouldn't fly.

Plus, the US's reach often extends to EU companies. Hetzner and OVH both have a US presence. I don't know, but I'd guess that people on-call in the US can access a lot of their EU presence. Why wake up someone in Germany or France at 3am when it's 9pm in the US? The US presents their US subsidiary (or US employees) with a warrant and the warrant expressly forbids them from disclosing to anyone so the European parent doesn't even know to restrict access from their US employees, etc. At some point, one needs to be realistic about the threat vectors.

On a practical level, stop using third party services where you (and your users) are the product. Google Fonts is free because you're paying for it with user data. An Azure-hosted database costs money because Microsoft doesn't get access to what you're storing in that database. Do get DPA agreements from your third parties and give them a look over to make sure they seem reasonable. Do genuinely care about your users' data. That does take a bit of effort (not just good feelings). For example, you need to know that Google Analytics feeds the data into Google's larger marketing machine rather than being private storage for you.

On perhaps the most practical level, check what third-party stuff you're serving on your site - javascript, images, fonts, etc. People don't know where your database is stored unless you tell them. They can easily see that you're loading a Facebook tracking pixel since that's in the page you're serving to them. That gives them an easy way to see if going to your website is loading something that's tracking them without their consent - even if you're not wanting that third party to do that tracking. Your users complained to you about the things they could see. I think those are often the most likely ways that GDPR violations will happen too - companies haven't really built their businesses around backend data stealing (err, sharing) because they'd need to make an SDK for Java, C#, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc. JavaScript lets them write once and even push updates without you needing to update dependencies. Focus on the front-end stuff that users can see - both because it's the most likely place you'll have compliance issues and because it's probably the most likely place you'll be caught with compliance issues.

Again, I am not a lawyer and none of this is advice.

That link is about the DPO at EU institutions and bodies. It doesn't apply to your one person startup unless you meet the criteria for needing a DPO.

The UK ICO describes when a company does and doesn't need a DPO, at least with the UK implementation of the GDPR:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...

The first question it addresses is "Do we need to appoint a Data Protection Officer?", for which the answer can be "no", depending on your activities and type of organisation.

Roughly, it's a no if you are not a government body and your PII handling is secondary (such as for HR in your startup) rather than a core activity at large scale (such as running a HR service or user-tracking service).

As a startup it is plausible that you are a "yes" if you handle PII as a core activity, for example if you are taking user's PII such as their names, addresses, locations, etc. But even than, you may not be doing so at large enough scale to require a DPO. If you are, though, it's time to hire one, and you're probably at a scale where you can afford to.

Broadly, you could think of a DPO as more like an auditor or independent overseer in a particular area, whose job is to check you are complying. Just like an auditor or security professional, you can hire an external one in to ensure your business is complying and show that you've done so. Larger companies doing large and more intrusive activities need it, the same way as those are the companies which need other forms of auditing and independent oversight.

It's a different function from the DPC (data protection controller), who is in charge of actually processing the PII you hold. See "What are 'controllers' and 'processors'?":

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...

At a one person startup the DPC is almost certainly you, as you make the decisions on how to process PII, even if you delegate the actual processing sometimes. You have responsibilities as a DPC, but you can do it, and it'll just be one more, among the many duties you have as a director of a one person company. Imho, being a DPC isn't any more onerous than the other duties of a director.