Why Most American Companies Should Comply With European Data Protection Law
A few years ago, the EU passed a new law introducing a set of data protection regulations called GDPR. The law is intended to protect European consumers and ensure that companies and other institutions do not store and use consumers’ private data and information that may identify individual people.
The law is commonly referred to as GDPR which stands for General Data Protection Regulations. One of the cornerstones of the GDPR law relates to cookie consent, which deals with how website owners collect and handle the data that is activated when a user visits their websites.
In a nutshell, GDPR cookie consent requirements apply to all websites with visitors from within the EU.
This means that any website owner – be it in the US or anywhere else in the world – should think about the importance of complying with the European data protection law if he or she wants to do business by the book.
Who does the GDPR law apply to?
As mentioned in the above, any business owner in America, who has an online presence in the form of a website, could get online visitors in the form of consumers who are protected by the GDPR cookie consent law. This means that in practice, the GDPR law requirements could be relevant to any business owner in the world.
Simply put: As long as you do business online the GDPR law applies to you.
And if you think you might as well disregard the European set of regulations, you should reconsider and make an effort to comply with the European data protection law – because it really makes good sense for commercial business reasons as well.
What most website owners underestimate about cookie consent
It goes without saying that if you want to comply with the legal requirements, you need to ensure that you have the appropriate cookie consent forms in place on your website.
But you should keep in mind that legal stuff is not the only significant consequence you could face as a result of not meeting the requirements for data protection law.
Many business owners tend to overlook the importance of how it affects a company brand when there are shortcomings and uncertainty in terms of how that company adheres to rules and regulations. There is a risk that these kinds of things send a message to consumers that the company does not care about staying within the rules laid out for them. And that creates noise around the company brand.
The noise may influence the way other stakeholders sees the company as well, so in the end it can really negatively affect your business situation if you choose not to do your best to comply with GDPR cookie consent requirements.
Luckily there are many ways to ensure that your website is fully GDPR compliant. And if you want to tackle it the easiest way possible, you can start by installing a plugin on your website – that way you have a chance of becoming GDPR compliant within just a few days from now.
