From this date, it will be illegal to contact anyone, including customers and prospective customers, with business messages without their permission.
GDPR covers any sort of data about an EU citizen, it includes names, contact information, card payment details, IPs, cookies etc. The change aims to remove ‘dead data’ that can remain on lists for years and stop businesses contacting people without their consent.
Adding an ‘opt-out’ option simply won’t suffice and all businesses will need to assume every single one of their contacts is opted out and have them opt-in again. This change will be implemented regardless of business size and will particularly impact large organisations with thousands, if not millions, of people on their data list.
Failing to comply with the changes could result in a business being fined 4% of their annual turnover or €20million, whichever is greater. In 2016, Talk Talk was fined £400,000 by the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) for a security data breach. Under the new regulations, this figure would have been £59million. Businesses could even be asked to supply their database and the proof of opt-in.
Champion are currently reviewing our own internal systems and procedures and will provide further updates in due course.