Unless businesses want to be on the front page; consumer trust in data privacy is essential. GDPR introduces the key principles of data privacy by design and default. Consumers and business are recognising that data privacy is more than just data protection and security.

For data privacy to exist in the age of data capitalism the consumer must be at the core of that business model. Consumers must be in control and be empowered to monetise their own data. Businesses are not only racing against the GDPR compliance countdown clock – they’re also worried about their reputations – and no one wants to be the last company to care about their customer’s data rights.

The GDPR sets a higher standard for consent – it must be an affirmative, unambiguous action and granular for specific processing operations. There is no ‘grandfathering’ under GDPR and as a result businesses are very concerned that this means they will no longer be able to use their existing customer data.

There is also a new burden for demonstrating consent and keeping records of all data processing. Businesses are either remediating their databases to get the required consent, or they’re scrambling to find another legal basis.

Building customer trust

The UK Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, said it best at the DMA Data Protection Summit in February 2018: “It seems to me that a lot of energy and effort is being spent on trying to find a way to avoid consent. That energy and effort would be much better spent establishing informed, active, unambiguous consent. You say you will lose customers. I say you will have better engagement with them and be better able to direct more targeted marketing to them. You will have complete confidence that your customers have given informed consent.”

written by  Trunomi in Blog, Data Monetisation, GDPR