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It’d be impossible not to know of GDPR by now. If you’ve got an email address, then you’ve almost certainly been inundated with messages from all those online stores you’ve used over the years and mailing lists that you never got around to unsubscribing from, each of them letting you know that your privacy is important to them and that GDPR regulations are now in effect. Despite the importance of the new legislation, however, for most people day to day life likely hasn’t been affected by the change. That is, unless you get your daily news from sources outside the EU…
GDPR affects the way that businesses handle your data. It is a multi-faceted regulation, but the shorthand is that it basically gives internet users full control over how their personal data is used. This generally means everything from basic details like names and postal addresses to credit card info and even IP addresses. It means that websites need to first get permission from the user for their data to be tracked and stored and, if accepted, that the data is properly stored in such a way so as to protect it from misuse and exploitation.
However, while this is an EU regulation – meaning even offline businesses and offices must comply with its laws – the internet has no boundaries, and if an EU citizen can access a U.S.-based website then that, too, must oblige by these laws. As a result many websites have had to block access to their sites for anyone located in the European Union.
Most notably this has affected newspaper websites, such as the entire umbrella of websites from media giant Tronc – who publishes the likes of the LA Times or the Chicago Tribune – completely blocking access from most European countries. Tronc claims it is looking into options to overcome this issue, but has not yet provided any suggestions on how it might. Others, such as USA Today, have created an EU-exclusive version of the website; this “EU Experience” drops the trackers otherwise built into the site to avoid user identification and therefore comply with GDPR.
There’s no denying that for personal online privacy, GDPR is definitely a benefit. However, there are some users who may well want foreign access to these sites; perhaps a frequent traveler or expat spending some time in Europe will want to keep up to date with the latest news back home.
Thankfully this is a simple problem to solve. By activating any decent VPN – such as IPVanish – you’ll be able to pick a location that you’d like to connect to, and by choosing any U.S. server you’ll have no issue tricking a website into thinking you’re visiting from America and step over those frustrating geo-blocks.
Of course, this only solves the problem of access. By entering into these sites as a supposed ‘U.S. citizen’, you’ll no longer be subjected to the rulings of GDPR and as such have no way of stopping your personal data from being tracked, monitored and perhaps even stored unsecurely. There’s going to be a settling period while U.S. websites figure out how they will handle these new regulations, but it’s unlikely these blocks will remain permanently.
What will happen is one of two things: either websites will create EU-only versions of their sites that provide the same content but without data tracking like with USA Today, or a European visitor will be prompted to accept that their data is subjected to monitoring before the site’s content is unlocked.
Either way, accessing U.S. sites isn’t likely to keep your private data protected the same way that it might in the EU – and even then you’re hardly immune to tracking and the big data of business. It’s a good idea to get into the habit of using a VPN connection regardless, since it won’t just allow you to access blocked content but it’ll also mask your connection to ensure that even if a website is monitoring your cookies and connection data you’ll still protect yourself from giving up anything sensitive to an unknown entity.
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