Image shows: Big Brother is watching us all - except for the culprits...

Image ID: 97

So here we stand, six days into the Brave New World of GDPR. Has a lot changed? Not really. My mailbox is still full of the same old promotional emails from the same old people. I still get the same types of spam messages, emanating from Russia, Vietnam, China and anywhere else.

What the bureaucrats never seem to get into their thick skulls is that when people are breaking existing laws, the introduction of new ones is not going to make a blind bit of difference to the culprits. All it will do, has done and is doing, is to make it more difficult for the law-abiding to comply.

I am sure that the ICO will proudly go about blowing its own trumpet, citing the number of decent, honest business people it has criminalised in recent time, while the giant corporations who squander our details willy-nilly via the cloud will sail majestically on, untroubled by little John Bull and his sabre-waving.

Criminal elements will continue to capitalise on this laxity by gleefully hoovering up all the spilt data and putting it to their own use. Thiefbots will continue to scour the internet looking for innocent security oversights and stealing personal information for identity theft activities while the authorities turn a blind eye to those big enough to defend themselves legally, or devious enough to make their detection difficult.

In short, we have been told a pack of lies as usual by those who cling desperately to power, who feel that holding a post is more important than performing its duties. We have been sold a pup in the form of ill conceived, badly thought through, hastily cobbled together legislation that does nothing to address the real issues, just gives the government another licence to print money, wrested from the hands of decent people whose shoes they are not fit to clean.

IN the last eleven months of working on this aspect, I thank all our customers who took the initiative and upgraded their sites to show policies that comply with the new legislation, and look forward to meeting the new ones, whose sites will comply from day one. For those not yet compliant, it is still not too late, and could save a good deal of time, trouble and cost in future, so if you would like to talk it over, feel free to call at any time or send an email.