Microsoft Corporation, the tech giant, announced that it is planning to extend the rights of the European Union’s new data privacy law to its global customers and not exclusively to users from European territory. The law comes after tech companies such as Facebook were found guilty of sharing personal user data to third parties for ad-targeting.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), will come in full effect as from today and aims to give internet users a better control of how companies use their personal data. Moreover, tech companies will have to comply to a rigid protocol on how they store personal users’ data and how they share it with third parties.
“As an EU regulation, GDPR creates important new rights specifically for individuals in the European Union. But we believe GDPR establishes important principles that are relevant globally,” read a blog post from Julie Brill, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Microsoft.
Brill particularly made reference to Data Subject Rights, which provides internet users with the right to be aware of what particular data is collected and to correct, delete or redirect that particular piece of information.
“Our privacy dashboard gives users the tools they need to take control of their data,” she added.
Brill also informed that Microsoft has published an updated privacy statement about the products and services the company provides. The updated privacy statement echoes Microsoft’s decision to provide the same key rights under GDPR to all Microsoft users over the globe, she affirmed.
Microsoft has a dedicated team of 1,600 engineers working on GDPR projects and Brill stated that given the fact the new regulation has just be issued and is currently being revised and interpreted, Microsoft will continue developing its policy to remain compliant to the new law.
She further stated that Microsoft will tirelessly reassess its products, services and data uses as knowledge about the GDPR increases.
Microsoft is not the only tech-giant complying to the new GDPR regulation; other internet majors such as Facebook, Twitter and Google have also updated their privacy settings even before the GDPR rules came into effect. The deep-pocketed tech companies have been sending millions of mails over the past few weeks, alerting their users about the updated data policies and asking users to agree to them.