The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is a European privacy law approved by the European Commission in 2016 and will go into effect May 25th 2018. The GDPR will replace a prior European Union privacy directive known as Directive 95/46/EC which has been the basis of European data protection law since 1995. The GDPR is an attempt to strengthen, and modernize EU data protection law and enhance individual rights and freedoms, consistent with the European understanding of privacy as a fundamental human right. The GDPR regulates, among other things, how individuals and organizations may obtain, use, store, and remove personal data. In a nutshell, it’s giving EU citizens and residents control over their personal data while simplifying the regulatory environment for international business that takes place in the EU.

The Data Protection Principles include requirements such as:

• Personal data collected must be processed in a fair, legal, and transparent way and should only be used in a way that a person would reasonably expect.
• Personal data should only be collected to fulfill a specific purpose and it should only be used for that purpose. Organizations must specify why they need the personal data when they collect it.
  
  
• Personal data should be held no longer than necessary to fulfill its purpose.
  
  
• People covered by the GDPR have the right to access their own personal data. They can also request a copy of their data, and that their data be updated, deleted, restricted, or moved to another organization.

GDPR adds some new requirements regarding how companies should protect individuals’ personal data that they collect and process. It also raises the stakes for compliance by increasing enforcement and imposing greater fines for breach. Beyond these facts it’s simply the right thing to do. At Learn Sign Language we strongly believe that your data privacy is very important, and we already have solid security and privacy practices in place that go beyond the requirements of this new regulation.

At Learn Sign Language we practice transparency internally and we believe that transparency extends to our customers. With our updated Terms of Use we openly describe what personal data we are collecting, processing, why, how we use it, who we share it with and how long we store it.

We have always made an effort to keep the language in our Terms of Use as clear as possible and we have updated these notices to describe how we are respecting and protecting your personal data. We hope you find it concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible.

We’ve updated our cookie policy to provide you with complete transparency into what is being set when you visit our site and how it’s being used. On our cookie policy page you can also read about steps you can take in order to control how your browser handles cookies.

We have reviewed and identified all the areas of Learn Sign Language where we are collecting and processing customer data. Using this matrix we have validated our legal basis for collecting and processing personal data and double checked that we are apply the appropriate security and privacy safeguards across our entire infrastructure and software ecosystem. Our terms of use identifies what we are doing with the data we collect and how we manage consent.

We are working with our customers to answer any questions and address any concerns regarding how we protect their personal data and gearing up for GDPR. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.