Do you have the right to be forgotten online ?

BBC Click 2012 February, 10

When you sign up to a social networking site, who owns your data? You or the site? And if you want to leave, are you allowed to erase that content or do companies like Facebook or Google actually own it?

David Ried reports on the new European Commission directive that aims to put you back in charge of your data. The directive should safeguard the right of the Internet users. The European commission put a video online to highlight the fact that most consumers are not aware of the way their personal data are harvested and reused.

The new data protection directive aim to put people in charge of their data, to reverse the assumption that data harvested by company are theirs because they offer you a service. The heart of the directive is that personal data are yours, it belongs to you, always.

You should be able to know what they have got on you, what are they are using it for, and they should ask the permission to process it or sell it on. Company can’t go foraging for data in the wild without any rules. According to the directive, they also have to tell you when there has been a serious breach and when you data have been compromised in anyway.

They can’t go on fishing expedition to get hold of any data they can get their hands on and keep hold of it for as long as they want to make money of it.

They also have to delete your data instead of move it to another file on their server.

Even if they say they are collecting your data anonymously, the danger is that when the information is sold to commercial bodies, they match it up with data coming from different sources and all of a sudden, you become identifiable. 

Vocabulary

To sift through
to examine information, documents etc in order to find what you are looking for

• Sift every grain of information until you find the answer
• Bomb experts continue to sift the blast site.

The small print
the details of something such as a contract that are printed in very small letters and often contain conditions that limit your rights. The usual American word is fine print.

To put back in charge

• To put you back in charge of your personal data. Reprendre la main sur

Safeguard someone/something against something
to protect something or someone from being harmed or having problems

• We hope that world leaders can agree on a plan to safeguard the environment. Sauvegarder, protéger

• The company was blamed for failing to safeguard workers against dangerous chemicals.

Assumption

• My assumption is based on the available evidence. Hypothèse, supposition

Harvest

• They can’t harvest personal data without telling it to you. Moissonner

To forage
to search in a wide area for something, especially food, to use your hands to search inside something, for example a pocket or a bag

• They spend their days foraging for food around the city.

A breach of
a failure to follow a law or rule, a failure to do something that you have promised to do or that people expect you to do

• Reproduction of the CD constitutes a breach of copyright. violation
• If you don't deliver on time, you could be sued for breach of contract.

a situation in which someone does something that goes against accepted rules of social behaviour

• breach of trust/confidentiality
• a clear breach of patient confidentiality
• an embarrassing breach of etiquette

To be in breach of something

• The company was found to be in breach of environmental regulations.

To match up
if one thing matches up with another, or if they match up, they are the same or have similar qualities

• Information received from the two informants didn't match up.

to find someone or something that forms the right combination with someone or something else

• You have to match up the inventor to the invention.

to match up to someone/something to be as good as someone or something

• The British sci-fi film has never matched up to its American counterpart.

To match up to expectations

• His performance has not matched up to expectations.

All well and good
used for saying that you are satisfied with a situation, or with some aspects of a situation but not with others

• If old people can be looked after at home, it’s all well and good, but they need the facilities as well. c'est bien beau