Was the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) a Huge Misfire?

The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is a regulation enacted by the European Union (EU) which went into effect in late May, 2018. When a user visits a website, he or she has likely seen one of the million popups explaining the GDPR requirement. As an alternative, sites to which a consumer is subscribed may have sent out an email alert explaining their data collection policies. Any site that has availability in the EU has to show this GDPR information. Even though the GDPR is not an American regulation, most Americans are seeing the emails and alerts.

In an analysis of the GDPR alerts and notifications sent out to internet users, industry observers discovered that the only things companies took from user consent forms and web design functionality were anti-patterns. So what is an anti-pattern? The Agile Alliance defines an anti-pattern as a solution that is not effective and highly likely to be counter-productive. What does this mean to the average user who interacts with a site? To start, site users may have a less-than-beneficial experience with the site. The data collected may not be managed or used appropriately. Consumers may not have the ability to opt out, which is what the GDPR aimed to provide.

Much to the dismay of users, the GDPR has made using the internet a lot more complicated. The policies implemented by many sites are confusing at best. Some users do not even understand what the legalese means. In some cases, sites are even using curse words and other uncouth language in order to make a point. This could offend users who prefer to not deal with that type of language. While the GDPR had a goal of making companies change how they collect data and to take a hard look at what data they collect and why they really need to collect it, what it actually did was to reinforce their stance on collecting everything possible and using it as they please. In this sense, the GDPR has backfired from its original purpose in a spectacular way. For more information click here https://i.imgur.com/bdaKjvB.png.