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Ask HN: How is GDPR affecting your business?

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Re: Ask HN: How is GDPR affecting your business?

#11

Post by cyberferret »

Not a great deal. Sure, more paperwork in terms of obtaining DPAs (Data Processing Agreements) with some of the vendors we work with, as well as preparing our own DPA for our customers, but overall not a huge impact as we already value privacy highly in our SaaS app.

On the development side, we've had to accelerate some 'nice to have features' that we had planned for later, to this month. Things like scheduled deleting of old customer data, migrating to a more robust SQL system that supported 'encryption at rest' etc. Things that would have had to be done anyway.

Re: Ask HN: How is GDPR affecting your business?

#12

Post by anothergoogler »

BjoernKW wrote: post #9

I run a small consulting business. It's been quite some effort but for my business so far it's been a net positive because it made me rethink, clarify and streamline my processes.

How does GDPR affect your business? You're not really responsible for anybody's data, presumably you inherit the policies of your customers.

Re: Ask HN: How is GDPR affecting your business?

#13

Post by SquareWheel »

dvdhnt wrote: post #4

It has been 24 hours since GDPR came into effect. To be blunt, if anyone’s business has been affected dramatically, then their business is likely too brittle or unethical. If that’s the case, you should rethink your business model.

That's a dangerous oversimplification. Standard best practices like logging server traffic with IP addresses, or making immutable backups with no way to edit that data now have serious problems. It's ridiculous to call them "unethical", and it has nothing to do with business models.

Re: Ask HN: How is GDPR affecting your business?

#15

Post by ebiester »

dvdhnt wrote: post #4

It has been 24 hours since GDPR came into effect. To be blunt, if anyone’s business has been affected dramatically, then their business is likely too brittle or unethical. If that’s the case, you should rethink your business model.

Alternatively, some part of your business has spent the last X months preparing for this so that their business won't be affected dramatically.

I am easily tracked to my place of employment so I don't want to get into too many details, but we were doing things ethically but still had a non-trivial amount of going through, dotting our i's and crossing our t's, making sure that there weren't pockets of unknown data, putting together plans in case someone asked for data retrieval or deletion, etc.

The longer a company's been in business, the more onerous the task is. I can't imagine what it would be like for a large company with mainframes still around.

Re: Ask HN: How is GDPR affecting your business?

#17

Post by BjoernKW »

anothergoogler wrote: post #12
BjoernKW wrote: post #9

I run a small consulting business. It's been quite some effort but for my business so far it's been a net positive because it made me rethink, clarify and streamline my processes.

How does GDPR affect your business? You're not really responsible for anybody's data, presumably you inherit the policies of your customers.

First, I'm responsible for handling my clients' data, such as their email addresses or phone numbers. It doesn't matter that they're business customers rather than consumers. GDPR still applies.

Secondly, though not always the case, I might have to process their respective customers' data in some way in order to do my job (by having access to a production database, for example).

So, yes, GDPR absolutely does apply to my business.

Re: Ask HN: How is GDPR affecting your business?

#18

Post by standyro »

I work for a major news media company and our GDPR compliance has been extremely difficult with our relatively small dev staff that manages many news outlets so we've opted to block access from all of Europe. It's gotten a lot of press, but it's an unfortunate reality. Most of our adtech and analytics vendors we use have put the burden on smaller companies like us -- ripe for disaster.

Re: Ask HN: How is GDPR affecting your business?

#19

Post by merinowool »

My product collects limited number of personal information and in theory it has always been compliant. Only thing I have doubt about is AdSense. I have disabled personalized ads, but I have no idea if that is compliant. Also working on data portability, so users can export their data. (Never got a request for that though) If revenue from ads will go down I will be considering closing the business. I don't feel comfortable going paid subscription route.

Re: Ask HN: How is GDPR affecting your business?

#20

Post by cfitz »

BjoernKW wrote: post #17
anothergoogler wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does GDPR affect your business? You're not really responsible for anybody's data, presumably you inherit the policies of your customers.

First, I'm responsible for handling my clients' data, such as their email addresses or phone numbers. It doesn't matter that they're business customers rather than consumers. GDPR still applies. Secondly, though not always the case, I might have to process their respective customers' data in some way in order to do my job (by having access to a production database, for example). So, yes, GDPR absolutely does apply to…

Can you please share how GDPR affects the second workflow? I'm curious, as I've performed similar work.
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