this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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[–] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You confuse things. Just read: https://www.compliancejunction.com/gdpr-guideline-for-companies-with-less-than-250-employees/

If you think that your company can simply ignore the introduction of the GDPR and continue as before, well, think again. Any company that is found not to be complying with regulations of GDPR can be penalized with heavy fines, or a company may have to suspend or stop processing personal data. In fact, many companies are not yet ready for GDPR because they figure this legislation will not influence their company.

DPR compliance is as important for companies with less than 250 employees as it is for large multi-national corporations. Consequently, many companies have chosen to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) to address to the GDPR requirements or appoint a consultancy company to get their GDPR preparations started before delegating the role to an existing employee. For further information about this option, please refer to our article “Do Small Companies Need to Appoint a DPO under GDPR?”

Not sure how you think individual people can get fined under the GDPR but companies with less than 250 employees can't. This is just about the only exemption:

Article 30 of GDPR is about a data inventory record and provides one potential exception for Organisations with less than 250 employees. This is a limited exemption which states that Organisations with less than 250 employees may be exempt from maintaining a data Inventory or record of processing activities. This Exemption is a minor exemption and only applies for Organisations with less than 250 employees in certain circumstances where there is no processing that is likely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of data subjects, the processing is only occasional, excludes special categories of personal data and personal data related to criminal convictions. The Full text of Article 30 is below. This limited exemption should in no means be interpreted by Organisations with less than 250 employees as an authorisation to ignore overall GDPR Compliance.

[–] hamid@lemmy.world -5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)
[–] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

.... At this point, you realize you are just grasping at straws, right? And ones you are seriously misunderstanding, given your previous less than 250 employees statement.

It's not much, but I would advice you to read the second answer here, https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/29052/do-web-applications-as-hobby-projects-need-to-comply-with-the-gdpr , and seriously think about whether a site with many more users and much more personal data, specially those receiving revenue streams in the form of donations and with a team made up of more than one person https://team.lemmy.world/ , would be more or less likely to be accountable to the GDPR under a court of law than a personal blog.

Ruud should probably be getting in contact with https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/contact/informatie-en-meldpunt-privacy-imp or on the telephone Monday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to 12 noon on 088-1805250 if he hasn't already.

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Doesn't matter. Lemmy instances are technically "entities" so the law applies to them. You don't have to be a business, just "anything that processes EU citizen's personal data".

[–] loudwhisper@infosec.pub 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

citizen

Actually I believe it's "residents". You don't need to be a citizen.

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

It's both indeed, citizens as well as residents.

[–] hamid@lemmy.world -4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)
[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 0 points 8 months ago

GDPR applies regardless of any "business". It applies to any entity processing personal data.

Which is incredibly broad by the way. IP addresses and email addresses are personal data too. Same goes for "account data" in a broad sense. So Lemmy does collect personal data, and has to be compliant with the GDPR.

Of course, for a fine there needs to be an investigation and the entity has to not comply with GDPR requests after a warning. And you're absolutely right that devs can't be sued for this, but the sysadmin running the instance can be. But that would only happen after GDPR noncompliance.