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by deith 2356 days ago
How could they enforce that? By barring EU residents from dealing with Travelex?
2 comments

Note I am not suggesting that this will happen with this particular company. I don't understand this case well enough to comment on it.

In a hypothetical situation of a non EU company significantly breaching GDPR this could be resolved by e.g. seizing all funds belonging to the company in EU banks or in extremes by finding the company's board in contempt of court and then arresting and imprisoning them if they ever travel to a country with a extradition agreement.

Well Travelex is a gigantic company, well-run (business-wise if not infosec-wise :P) and would comply with any imposed fines etc.

But your question is interesting. Imagine an onion service, theoretically perfectly shielded, that took Personal Data from it users and then sold it. Or even a normal Internet service, based in North Korea. GDPR would be unenforceable.

Ultimately we depend on the norms of international agreements, the desire and need to interoperate with global banking systems, etc.

As far as I can tell there's still no actual mechanism in existence to enforce GDPR against an entity which has no significant operations in/financial exposure to the EU.

The GDPR text basically says "we'll ask other countries nicely and negotiate with them".

I'll be interested to see how the first real case goes against even a US-based entity that doesn't operate in the EU, much less one based in a country like North Korea.

I assume they will just block the domain.
"they" being the entire EU? there's no mechanism for that.
> no mechanism for [blocking access to company X for the whole EU]

..they'll ask all the EU ISPs in each of 28 member states to block company X - nicely.

() "EU citizens" meaning potential customers of company X - the "enticement" for company X to pay the EU the fine.

Maybe someone should organize a campaign to flood the European GDPR Regulators with "our data might have been compromised already or maybe in the future, and might have contained data on EU residents, that might be considered 'sensitive' We are - (or will be) - working on it, but just wanted to let you know immediately so that you can't say we didn't warn you and slap us with a ga()-illion dollar/euro fine.." () “Ga” subject to change at any moment based on ECB forecasts, or how much we don’t like you.

All kinds of companies, from all over the world (eu or not) flooding the GDPR headquarters in Brussels with "pre-emptory warnings". The purpose of course being to let them know how ridiculous (and possibly/probably arbitrary) their regulatory framework

And is anyone else annoyed that since GDPR started, every single website that even so much as stores your username now has a "this website uses cookies" thing you have to click on to get rid of it? And if you turn off cookies, you see this damn intrusive thing every single time. How is this making the web "safer"?! Can "we" (whatever that means) petition them to enact a standard where people can set a preference in their web browsers that says "I don't care unless it's financial/medical/physical-address data" It's a $#%$5# pain in the collective derriere.

I wouldn't be surprised if some websites are doing it as a matter of course, "just in case" - like the "this product contains things that are known to cause cancer cause cancer to the state of California" - applied to everything - in a catalog that sells drill bits (okay, I suppose the couple of nano-grams of drill-bit-dust coming off it). Just to be safe (pun unintended).

> And is anyone else annoyed that since GDPR started, every single website that even so much as stores your username now has a "this website uses cookies" thing you have to click on to get rid of it? And if you turn off cookies, you see this damn intrusive thing every single time.

I am indeed very annoyed that so many companies are throwing an online tantrum over the very reasonable requirements of GDPR. Most of those cookie banners aren't even GDPR-compliant because they don't let you opt-out of tracking and don't actually tell you what data they are tracking or who they are giving it to.

Just tell people what you are actually fucking doing with their data and let them opt-out of having their data collected. It's not that fucking hard.

I think the GDPR is great regulation that puts people before companies.