CDP Institute

One GDPR-induced crisis is resolved: Jamie, our Department of the Obvious intern, is back at work despite his scandalous behavior at our GDPR Day party last week. He offers this study from Performics, Microsoft, and Northwestern University, proving that search queries with terms like “shop” indicate that someone is interested in buying things. You read it here first.

Programmatic ad buying in Europe has been disrupted by incomplete preparations for GDPR, which went into effect on Friday.

The dust hasn’t settled on GDPR but attention is already turning to the next set of European Union privacy rules, known as ePrivacy. This protects communications and in particular will restrict ability for companies to capture metadata such as location. It also imposes stricter rules on data security. Implementation is being delayed as details are worked out amid lobbying by tech firms, privacy advocates, and others.

Here’s a little reminder of what could go wrong: a Portland woman found her Alexa device had sent a recording of her private conversation to an email contact without permission. (Portlandia fans will be especially amused.) Amazon found the device was functioning properly but misunderstood background noises as instructions. Related: researchers have found they can embed undetectable smart device voice commands within recorded songs. Remind me again why we need these devices?

“Self-Learning Data Platform” Reltio has raised $45 million in new funding, bringing their total to $117 million. Reltio’s roots are in master data management but it now focuses primarily on unified customer databases and related tools for analytics and recommendations. The “self-learning” label relates to use of machine learning to generate insights and recommendations.

Most of the GDPR discussion has focused on bringing your own data collection into compliance.

Of course you know that GDPR goes into effect today. You probably weren’t wondering about CDP Institute’s own compliance efforts but rest assured we’ve done our best. You’ll notice new consent language on our downloads and we’ve updated our terms of use and privacy policy. What’s that you say – we’re supposed to notify subscribers of those changes? We just did.

Let’s take a break from obsessing about GDPR and obsess about blockchain. TechCrunch says venture capitalists have invested more than $1.3 billion so far this year, more than the previous eighteen months combined. Not really surprising.

There are so many new blockchain products that we can only mention the most intriguing. Poseidon Foundation uses blockchain to buy carbon credits as part of retail transactions. Their pilot project contributes to forest conservation in Peru every time someone buys Ben & Jerry’s ice cream at a store in London. The low transaction costs of blockchain make it practical.

You knew this was coming: a blockchain-based GDPR solution. Sure enough, it’s called GDPR Edge and was built by tech services company IntraEdge using Intel’s SGX secure processing technology. It runs on Microsoft Azure and is being sold by professional services firm BDO USA.

Confusion about GDPR opens some interesting opportunities. Here’s an announcement from something calling itself the European Center for GDPR Certification, which has launched a “Consumer Privacy Trust Seal”. They are definitely not a government agency and state clearly that “our function is not to certify businesses”. They do offer Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum versions of the seal, which makes very little sense if you think about it.

Visual analytics vendor Arcadia Data is also jumping on the GDPR bandwagon. You might find the connection tenuous but they do have data security and governance features that could help with GDPR compliance. David Meerman Scott calls this “newsjacking”. Many firms are doing it.