GDPR for children

Children use an email address, if they already have one, mainly to sign into the applications they use.

Adults, however, send letters and notifications to e-mail addresses.

Until now, many adults received notifications that they did not want to receive. From today, this cannot happen anymore.

The General Data Protection Regulation, abbreviated as GDPR, has entered into force.

We asked the Information Commissioner, Mojca Prelesnik, what children need to know about this.

Do we really need new uniform rules?

Of course, it will facilitate and unify the management of our data, which have for a long time not only been used here in Slovenia, but also sent throughout the EU and other countries.

Just think about the amount of data that can be linked to one person, and what damage could happen if you did not adequately protect it.

What is personal information?

This is not only our name, surname or EMŠO number, but also information about our latest trip to the cinema, where we marked our location on Instagram, or the number of kilometres we have cycled and recorded in a smart watch.

This data is valuable for many companies, but it’s also valuable for us, so we must use it wisely and get to know the rules that protect it.

Any company that wants to process data from children under the age of 16 will need the consent of their parents to do so.

What does all this mean?

We’ll have more control. We can look at what data companies process, ask it to be corrected, deleted, or be transferred to another company.

[As part of GDPR) all these rights have to be explained to us by companies and institutions in simple and understandable language.

 

Points to Consider

1. Do you know which are your personal data?
2. Do you know how to protect them?
3. Why can’t we just tell everything about ourselves?

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The original version of this article was published on May 25th.

English translation courtesy of JL Flanner, Total Slovenia News, an English language website with news from and about Slovenia.