European Digital Identity is coming…

The European Commission has a plan which enables citizens to identify themselves and share electronic documents from a special wallet app for smartphones. Major platforms will be required to accept the new European digital identity. The European Commission states that the use of identity by citizens will be voluntary. “The new European digital identity wallets … Read more

New standard contractual clauses for data transfers outside of the EU/EEA

Today the Commission issued modernised standard contractual clauses under the GDPR for data transfers from controllers or processors in the EU/EEA (or otherwise subject to the GDPR) to controllers or processors established outside the EU/EEA (and not subject to the GDPR). These modernised SCCs will replace the three sets of SCCs that were adopted under … Read more

EDPS investigates use of Amazon’s and Microsoft’s services by EU authorities

The European privacy regulator EDPS is launching two investigations into the use of Amazon’s and Microsoft’s cloud services by EU authorities. The reason is the invalidity of the Privacy Shield treaty between the EU and the United States. The European regulator states that when using the tools and services of major service providers, personal data … Read more

Ransomware pandemic gets AXA

Cyberinsurance giant AXA said that it would no longer be writing policies to cover ransomware payments. Now AXA in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the Phillippines have reportedly been hit… by a ransomware attack. The ransomware gang posted on its website over the weekend that it had stolen 3 terabytes worth of data, including: customers’ … Read more

Hamburg DPA prohibits the processing of Whatsapp data by Facebook

In Hamburg they go for it! The authority there relies on art 66 GDPR, which in case of urgency ensures that an authority may take action itself without European coordination. The reason is of course the changes in Whatsapp’s privacy policy that would result in data being passed on to Facebook and used there for … Read more

WhatsApp delays enforcing new privacy terms, but…

WhatsApp with two billion users around the world. was set to enforce its new data-sharing policy with Facebook on May 15 . Now WhatsApp people will remind and eventually become persistent so that at some point users will “encounter limited functionality on WhatsApp until you accept the updates”, according to WhatsApp. “You won’t be able … Read more

EU IT is losing from US Clouds while politicians are sleeping

Worldwide Cloud Marketshares in Q3 2020 are 32% by Amazon, 19% Azure and 7% Google Cloud (source: Canalys). Still there is no sound of a real replacement of the Privacy Shield, or a privacy regulation for the transatlantic data exchange, which is is a clear failure of the politicians and can only be remedied by … Read more

Medical appointments on Vaccines in Amazon Web Services

Doctors’ organisations and a human rights group recently challenged the storage of vaccine appointment data on a platform hosted in France and Germany by Amazon Web Services. They sought an urgent order to suspend the transfer of data from Doctolib (a French company contracted by the French government to provide a platform for vaccine appointments) … Read more