The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is going to take effect from May 25th which is going to affect all companies with customer details within the European Union.
The “My Data Request” is currently listing more than a dozen Tech Company guides which provide a procedure that a user can follow to get a copy of their own data. The website also links to a privacy policy that provides you with a guide if you don’t live in one of the EU nations. Tech Companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, Tinder and Snapchat provided an easy way to retrieve your data by providing a web portal to customers. The portal will help you to download a Zip Archive copy of your personal data.
It is worth nothing that not all personal data will be available for download, for example, Facebook currently tracks all the location activity of a user but the data won’t be available in that archive. The download only gets the copy of your messenger conversations, photos, shares and likes. Companies like Amazon have take a different approach and provide a public Email to their customers.
While it is hard to get your data from some companies like HSBC as you have to call them and provide them with verification credentials and then ask for your data which will be processed in one to two weeks. It should also be noted that you don’t need a third party tool or API access to get the data.
Many privacy experts are suggesting that customers should have a copy of their data periodically just to know what the company knows about the customer.
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