European Union set to approve new tough data protection rules

There are countless social media accounts with various profiles and different data online today. Before one becomes a member of any social site, there is a sign up process that involves entering personal and public information, and one can only wonder where this information is being sent.

The European Union officials have decided to take issues into their hands and are expected to give approval to the anticipated data protection regulations by Tuesday. This is an ongoing effort being made by the E.U. to ensure that individuals have a say over handling and management of their digital information.

These changes would be due by the early months of 2017. Some newly enforced policies would be put into law after court rulings across the 28 members of the European Union or in some specific countries. These efforts are made to ensure the privacy rights of Europeans are not jeopardized in anyway whatsoever. Peter Church, a technology lawyer at Linklaters in London, praised the E.U. and honored the efforts, saying, “Europe’s approach to privacy is much stronger than in the United States,” adding, “there is a fundamental difference in culture when it comes to privacy.”

Representatives from the European Commission, the European Parliament, and member states are expected to hold a meeting on Tuesday to confront these new rules planned to be put into action by 2017. This is, however, not the first meeting being held by the officials. As a matter of fact, there have been several other meetings held previously where the officials tried to come to a compromise on the matter. An announcement is expected by Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning in Europe.

Here are some of the policies waiting approval: companies are to inform national regulators of any data breach whatsoever within 3 days of occurrence, along with any proposals that go higher than what is demanded by the American authorities.

Children under the age of 16 are to seek parental consent from their guardians before attempting to use social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

National watchdogs would receive the approval to prosecute and issue fines summing up to millions of dollars if any company takes advantage of an individual’s online data without seeking consent.

Individuals can request of a company to take down any irrelevant or out of date data. This is commonly referred to as the “right to be forgotten.”

This war against the lack of privacy available to individuals has often created—and might continue to create—bad blood between the E.U. and major American tech companies like Facebook and Google, which are obviously the pioneers of assessing massive individual data in their database. The required punishment for law offenders is still undergoing negotiation, although it is likely to come to a term garnering up to 4 percent of a company’s total revenue. This has raised an alarm for the major tech companies that the change would most likely affect. Many have laid their complaints, especially Facebook, which constantly gets investigated into by national privacy watchdogs in France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands.