Data protection 2022: A quick recap

Four years after its introduction, The European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) has kept lawyers busy and increased the public’s awareness of privacy rights. 

What is data protection?

Data protection is the process of protecting people's personal data when they are online. Information, and personal data in particular, fuels the digital economy. It is the consumers' right to be able to decide how their data is being used. That is how the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was born. A framework of regulations, GDPR streamlined data and privacy regulations, encouraged consumers to educate themselves on their rights and file complaints if necessary. 

Compliance is an uphill battle

Global privacy legislation is spreading and becoming more diverse and complex. The challenge for businesses everywhere is that they must be constantly on their toes to keep up with ever-evolving legislation on a global scale.

Lawsuits and fines related to data privacy are becoming more common. On the big scale, Facebook is for example still struggling with compliance, with a recently leaked document showing how they are not always in control of what happens to their user data. Other big companies like Amazon and Google have already paid GDPR fines. 

“Companies have done a lot of work to bring their systems and processes in line with the GDPR, but it is a continuous exercise. In the same way regulations change, so does technology.”

- Steve Bakewell,
MD, EMEA of penetration testing provider NetSPI

Consumers want transparency

The good news is that 65% of the world's population will have their personal information covered under modern privacy regulations by 2023, according to a study by Gartner.

Consumers want transparency and care about who handles their data, and how their data is being used. A survey by Axway showed that 90% of respondent wished they knew what data companies had collected and worried about how this data was being used.

Only 37% felt companies were transparent about how they use people's data. 85% of people are concerned that their data might not be secure. 

How Mono supports GDPR

As a European-based company, GDPR has been a top priority not only for us as a company, but also to ensure that our reselling partners and their small business customers live up to these new data privacy standards. From a platform perspective, we’ve made significant updates to ensure not only compliance, but also convenience when it comes to new functionality for data privacy:

• Fully compliant automated Cookie Consent: Automated cookie compliance that stays up-to-date with changing legislation. Mono Cookie Consent is powered by industry-leading Cookiebot™ Consent Management Platform. Cookiebot is used by hundreds of European businesses such as Datenschutz Sheriff, city-map Stade, image transfer, Reclex Avocats, and SEO-küche Internet Marketing. 
• Using hCaptcha instead of Google’s reCAPTCHA: hCaptcha's image-recognition challenge only captures image-selection data, not personal information.
• We use Proxies to keep your IP address hidden: Proxies work as a middleman on the internet. When a Mono site sends a request to Google Fonts, for example, the request is first sent to Mono’s proxy. The proxy sends the request on, so the receiver can only see the Proxy’s IP address, not the individual user’s.
• Your personal information stays in the EU: Mono stores personal information such as names and email addresses on servers in Europe.