GDPR AND THE FED2 STAR
by Hazed
You may have found a whole lot of emails in your inbox recently, from companies that hold your data or from mailing lists you are subscribed to.
This flurry of activity is caused by the fact that the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (aka GDPR) comes into force this coming week (on May 25, 2018 to be exact).
Actually, the GDPR has been around for the last two years, but now that people have had that amount of time to prepare for it, it actually becomes enforceable. Needless to say, human nature being what it is, no one took a blind bit of notice until very recently. And then they panicked!
So, what is GDPR?
It’s an attempt by the EU to unify and simplify (Hah!) the rules for how the personal data of its citizens is handled by companies. However, given that we live in a connected world, this has implications for everyone using, or doing business on, the internet. Among the things it requires are the right to have your personal data erased in certain circumstances, and the right to access your personal data and to get information about how it’s used.
It also requires that you need to specifically opt in to any processing that might be done on your personal information. No more pre-ticked boxes saying you agree to sacrifice your first born if required to do so. That’s why you are getting these emails asking you to confirm you want to continue receiving mail from the list.
Companies are taking different views on what this requires them to do. Some are sending messages saying that if you want to continue receiving emails from them you should click a button to confirm, otherwise you will never hear from them again. Others are doing it the other way around: if you don’t do anything they will assume you want to stay in contact, and that if you do want to be taken off the list you need to unsubscribe. It’s all very confusing.
So for the record, in the case of the two mailing lists that we run (the Fed2 Star and Winding Down) the only processing we do is to send out the weekly mailings. We don’t do anything else with the email addresses, and don’t sell them to anyone else, aggregate them, pretend to anonymize them, or try to link them to ‘real’ names. In addition, we only send the emails to people who asked us to do, which is opting in. So you don’t need to do anything, unless you no longer want to read our deathless prose. In that almost inconceivable case, there is a link to cancel your subscription at the end of each edition of the newsletter.
If you want to know what personal data we hold on you, that’s easy. Just look at the header for this email and you will see, in the ‘To:’ line the email address we hold for you! And no, we have no idea what your real name is, where you live, work, or play. We hold your email address for as long as you want to receive the newsletters; once you cancel it’s gone, and we have no further access.
And, logically, since we don’t know where you live, this applies to everyone on the list – not just the EU citizens.
As far as the game itself goes, the only thing we know about you is – once again – your email address. That’s all we ask you to give us when you set up an account. We don’t do anything with your email address except use it to contact you if there is an issue with your Fed2 character, or to prove you are you if you forget your password.
This is set out in our privacy policy which you can read here: http://www.ibgames.net/ibinfo/privacypolicy.html.
