May 17 2018
You may have noticed some of your favorite websites and apps making updates to their privacy policies and settings. These changes are a direct result of the new Europe Privacy Laws, also known as the GDPR, which will affect how companies manage the data of European Union (EU) residents. These rules may seem like they shouldn't impact your United States based real estate website, but they actually might – and either way, it's a good time to evaluate your own website and make sure it feels secure for new and returning visitors.
According to Forbes, the GDPR "standardizes data protection law across all 28 EU countries and imposes strict new rules on controlling and processing personally identifiable information (PII), with the goal of giving control back to EU residents." According to CNBC, the GDPR provides EU consumers with the right to:
With the global nature of the internet, the GDPR impacts websites no matter their geographic location. Regardless of financial transactions, if you offer (or are able to offer) products or services to an EU resident and plan to collect, share or use their personal info in any way, these data sharing rules will apply.
For a real estate firm, this impacts how you handle buyer, seller, and renter information. Anything that can can identify a person, name, email address, phone number, mailing address, etc. will be protected under the GDPR. The GDPR will also offer the consumer more access to this information, allowing them to update, download and/or erase their personal data.
In simplest terms, if a person opt-outs from your newsletter, market insight updates, or any portion of your website, you'll have to remove them from your database completely. Whereas before you could just stop communicating with them, while holding on to their information. If the person wishes to hop back on your mailing list, they will have to opt-in and resubmit their personal info again.
The status quo of handling consumer data is changing. While some companies have been preparing for the new regulations since April of 2016, there's still time for others to adjust. These changes range from complete internal system overhauls, to reaching out to European users for explicit permission to continue using their data.
To stay safe, it's a good idea to evaluate your approach to how you collect, store and use a consumer's personal data. Here are a few areas to explore on your journey:
While the extent of the GDPR's effects will vary for each company, the risks are higher for those who ignore the rules and continue business with EU residents as usual. Specifically, failing to comply may result in a severe fines. Large companies like Facebook and Google may be able to withstand the hit, but it would be enough to sink a smaller real estate firm.
Although the laws are becoming more pro-consumer, there's no need to fret! Let the GDPR inspire your real estate business' data sharing practices, whether you're directly affected or not.
This post originally appeared on ListHub News.