SCOPE Europe’s Post

⚖️ GDPR violations do not always lead to a fine—but knowing when they do can make all the difference. Supervisory authorities have a range of corrective powers at their disposal, and in some circumstances, a violation may not warrant a fine at all. So, how does an authority determine whether a fine should be imposed—and how much should it be? 📖 The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) addressed this issue in its “Guidelines on the application of the power to impose administrative fines in relation to other corrective powers under the GDPR”: https://lnkd.in/eUBftFcG. The Guidelines set out a step-by-step methodology: Step 1️⃣: Can the infringement lead to an administrative fine? Step 2️⃣: Can the party under investigation be fined for the infringement? Step 3️⃣: Has the infringement been committed with intent or negligence? Step 4️⃣: Do the factors in Article 83(2) GDPR indicate a minor infringement? Step 5️⃣: Would the imposition of an administrative fine be effective, proportionate and dissuasive? 👉 At this point, there are two possible outcomes: Step 5️⃣a: The infringement is considered minor – an administrative fine should NOT be imposed. Step 5️⃣b: The infringement is not considered minor – an administrative fine should be imposed. For privacy pros, understanding this methodology is essential. It is not enough to know that a violation has occurred—you also need to understand how the circumstances of that violation can affect the regulatory response and the potential financial consequences. The EDPB Guidelines provide an important framework for making that assessment. We at ESPE previously discussed another important set of EDPB Guidelines, concerning the processing of personal data through blockchain technologies. For more details, see our post here: https://lnkd.in/dNxj2w8g. 📣If you are interested in ensuring that your projects comply with GDPR requirements, ESPE is ready to help you: legal@especg.com📨, https://especg.com/, www.especg.com. #gdpr #gdprcompliance #dataprivacy #edpb #privacy #success #ESPE

A privacy product should not ask users to give up control in order to regain it. NeoPriva is EU-based, GDPR-aligned, and built around privacy-by-design principles. It is being developed to help professionals and businesses detect supported - exposure, - understand risk, - generate removal requests where applicable, and - monitor for re-listings. How the platform handles data matters as much as what it finds. For European professionals, the trust question is clear: Does the privacy workflow match the privacy standard you expect? That makes regional trust part of product value. Join early access: 👉 👉 👉 https://lnkd.in/dV4xnrHq #GDPR #DataProtection #DigitalTrust

📢 The ICO is changing tomorrow. Here's what that means for you 📢. On 30 September the Information Commissioner's Office officially becomes the Information Commission. Until now, the regulator's powers have sat with one person, the Information Commissioner. From tomorrow they'll sit with a board instead, with a Chair, a Chief Executive and non-executive members making decisions together 👥. Ofcom and the CMA already work this way. So what does that mean for your business? 🤔 Honestly, not much right away. UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 still apply, and anything the ICO was already looking into carries straight over. You don't need to rush out and rewrite your privacy notices either 📄. Just update any mention of the "Information Commissioner" next time each document is due a review. It's still worth keeping an eye on, though 👀. Alongside the new board, the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 gives the regulator stronger powers to investigate. If data protection has slipped down your to-do list, now's a good time to pick it back up 🔒. If you'd like a hand working out where you stand, drop us a message 💬 We're always happy to chat. #DataProtection #UKGDPR #ICO

Consent is only as good as the way out of it. Where consent is the basis for processing, withdrawing it has to be as easy as giving it — and that requirement is routinely failed by design rather than by accident. Look at the shape of the choice on most sites. Accepting takes one click on a prominent button. Refusing, or changing your mind later, requires finding a settings drawer, expanding it, unticking categories and confirming. The consent was designed to be frictionless; the withdrawal was designed to survive the length of the visit. There is a second, quieter half to this. Withdrawal is not the same as recording that somebody asked. When a visitor withdraws consent, the processing it covered should stop. A preference centre that logs the change and keeps the tags firing is a log entry, not a withdrawal. Both are checkable from outside, at least in part. The scanner reports the consent signal a page presents and which cookies and third parties are contacted, so you can see whether the refusal route behaves like the accept route. Run it on your own site first: https://lnkd.in/dDrx27AP Visit fortiton.com #Consent #GDPR #Privacy #CookieConsent #Fortiton

Eight years into #GDPR, the numbers are still climbing. 📈 €7.1 billion in cumulative fines since 2018. 443 personal data breach notifications every day across Europe, up 22% year on year. €1.2 billion in fines issued over the latest 12-month period. And privacy investment is accelerating too. 38% of organisations now spend at least $5 million annually on privacy, compared with 14% a year earlier. The message for organisations is clear: privacy governance, breach readiness and regulatory compliance require sustained investment and board-level attention. Worth reading the full GDPR Statistics Worldwide 2026 report 👉 https://zurl.co/lpsDx

Ask ten people what they want from a privacy notice and most will give the same answer: how long do you keep my data, and what are you doing with it. Notice how often that line is missing, or present in a form that does not answer the question. "We retain your data as long as necessary for the purposes described" is a sentence that restates the question. A reader cannot act on it, and neither can an assessor. Where a fixed period is not possible, the criterion that determines it is the next best thing — the event or rule that triggers deletion. That is a real answer, and it is what a reader is looking for when they scan the page for the word retention. The useful property of this kind of statement is that it is checkable from the outside, for presence at least. Nobody external can confirm the retention is actually happening, but anyone can confirm whether the notice says what it is. Our free privacy policy check fetches a site, finds the notice and reports which of the statements a reader would and would not find in it. No signup, and it shows what it looked for: https://lnkd.in/dxXkKk8S Visit fortiton.com #PrivacyPolicy #GDPR #Privacy #Compliance #Fortiton

This year’s Brussels Privacy Symposium award sponsor Consumer Empowerment Project - CEP just wrapped up their session! Marco Scialdone (euroconsumers) and Wojciech Wiewiorowski (EDPS - European Data Protection Supervisor ) debated whether current foundational frameworks, such as the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, remain resilient enough to govern emerging technologies. 🏆The session also featured a special moment: the announcement of the 2026 My Data is Mine Award winner, Larisa Munteanu! The award celebrates young scholars whose research is helping shape the future of data protection. #BPS2026

Before you upload your unpublished research anywhere, ask where it actually goes. Your datasets and draft findings are intellectual property. Any tool that touches them should answer three questions plainly: is it GDPR compliant, is your data encrypted, and is your content used to train models. AcadlyAI is built with GDPR compliance, encryption, and 99.9% uptime because reliability and privacy are the same promise to a researcher. Swipe for what to check before you trust any tool. How carefully do you read a tool's privacy policy? #DataPrivacy #Research #AcadlyAI #Orvexaco #GDPR

With the DPDPA compliance timeline approaching, your website is becoming one of the most critical areas to review for privacy compliance. A few key questions every organisation should be asking: • Are we obtaining appropriate consent from the Data Principal before collecting personal data? • What cookies are being placed on our website? • Are marketing cookies or trackers being deployed with appropriate consent? • Is our Privacy Notice clearly available and appropriately aligned with our data practices? Run a privacy check on your website with Dutro’s BUA (Baseline Universal Advisor). Use the link below to run a scan and identify potential privacy compliance gaps: 🔗 https://bua.dutro.ai #DPDPA #DataPrivacy #PrivacyCompliance #DataProtection #Cookies #ConsentManagement #PrivacyNotice #DigitalPrivacy #Compliance

We have eight free tools on the site. None of them asks you to sign up, and none of them ends in a sales call. Here they are, in the order privacy teams tend to use them: The DSAR deadline calculator works out the statutory response date for a data subject request across eight regimes, applies the extension rules, and returns the notice date as well as the deadline. The EU AI Act risk classifier places a system in its tier — prohibited, high-risk, transparency-only or minimal — and shows the obligations that follow from it. The website privacy checker scans a site for cookies, trackers and consent gaps and gives you a report you can hand to someone else. Then there are four readiness checks — GDPR, NIS2, the privacy policy check and DSAR readiness — which are the same scan read four ways, each on its own page. All eight are here: https://fortiton.com/tools They exist because these are questions with answers. A deadline is arithmetic with rules. A tier is a classification. None of that should sit behind a demo request. Visit fortiton.com #Privacy #GDPR #AIAct #NIS2 #Compliance #Fortiton