Over the last few weeks you may have started getting a lot of emails from brands or companies asking you to re-sign up to their newsletter or agree to their terms and conditions.
If you’re wondering why this is all happening now, it’s actually for a really good reason.
All these emails, while mildly annoying, are a side-effect of a brand-new set of privacy laws called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that will come into effect at the end of May.
GDPR will be the biggest overhaul of data protection laws in the world and has been designed to create a unified set of standards that all companies must adhere to.
The laws will govern how a company can collect data from you, ensure that any stored data is securely protected, and will give you the right to access that data at any point.
This means huge changes for many organisations, but the changes for consumers will mostly centre around access to your online data.
What does this all have to do with your Asos newsletter? Put simply, if a company has your email on file then that counts as personal data.
That means that every company you’ve handed your email to now has to get your consent to keep that email on their records. Yes, having to reply to them all sounds like a massive pain, but if you want to clean out your inbox, a failure to consent also means your email will be deleted from their records.
But what happens if you do still get your Asos newsletter? From 25 May, records of email addresses will be subject to much stricter privacy laws ensuring that they keep those lists secure and protected from criminals.
That also means companies will now have to provide a clear and easy way for you to remove your email from their records. In short, no more hunting at the bottom of emails for the small print or getting lost in a website just to delete your shopping account.
Finally it’ll also mean that along with your email address, you’ll have the right to ask any of these companies to send you any and all personal information that they have collected on you and to do it within 30-days.