European Commission just recently announced the newly proposed legislation to strengthen trust and security of individuals when using the online messaging service such as WhatsApp, Gmail, and iMessage. There will be new rules for the electronic communications with the approaching General Data Protection Regulation which will be implemented on May 25, 2018.
With the said proposal, tech companies such as Facebook and Google will need to make sure the security and confidentiality of their customers. They will also need to secure their customer's conversations and the company will be required to ask permission first before tracking them online.
As of today, email services like Gmail has the capability to scan customers' emails to serve targeted ads without any agreement from its users. The proposal would turn things around since it will definitely affect the tech companies and will lessen their advertising revenue.
In addition, the proposal will also require and force the internet companies to ask consent from their customers before creating cookies. The commission also mentioned that they want to guarantee the consent of internet users in the European Union. There will be a lot of changes that will be made like how cookies are being used on websites if the proposal goes through.
The cookies are being used by tech companies to be able to track online behavior for them to bring a targeted ad. By then, anyone who will use the internet will have an option to use cookies or not or anything else on a specific site that is trying to track their online activities.
Furthermore, this can also ban uninvited and nonconsensual electronic communication. Director General of the European telecoms lobby ETNO, Lise Fuhr said, "Unlike others, telcos risk being prevented from expanding consumer choice by using traffic and location data for big data analytics, Internet of Things and connected driving services".
For those tech companies that will not follow the new regulations will face fines of up to four percent of their global turnover. For large companies, they might face a bigger problem if they will not comply with the new regulations if ever it'll be approved.
But the proposal will not become a law if the European Parliament and other member states will not approve it. WIRED already got in touched with Facebook and Google for a feedback on the said proposals.
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