Unsubscribing from fashion: GDPR flooding inboxes

As of 12:01 this morning the GDPR European privacy laws for data protection came into effect. For anyone with an email address and inbox it has been a week of hell. Email after email announcing a newly updated policy which companies invite you to read, but nobody does, and which ultimately won’t make an impactful difference in our everyday information-overloaded digital lives.

Except that this week we realised how many companies hold information about us. Companies I hadn’t heard from in the greater part of a decade apparently have kept my details in their spammy databases.

Then came the policy update from nearly every fashion company who sends newsletters to journalists, mostly in the same tone, stressing their transparency and valuing my privacy (hashtag how-did-you-acquire-my-email-in-the-first-place-if-I-did-not-sign-up?) and ultimately asking for permission to continue heralding their brand messages to my inbox whilst my data remains sacred and safe with them.

The no-reading problem

Truth be told I have never read a full privacy policy in my life. But has anyone? Remember the last time you updated your iphone and a 58-page policy agreement appears which requires endless scrolling, the ticking of three boxes and pressing the ‘agree’ button? Who has time to read and scroll?

Digital privacy doesn’t exist

Digital privacy is “the biggest lie on the internet” and precisely what companies and their marketing teams bank on: nobody reads the lengthy fine print, presumably because life is short and there isn’t enough time to decipher complicated license agreement jargon when all you wanted was to buy a pair of new sneakers from an online store.

But would we pause to read if we knew what we were agreeing to? When we click to agree to the terms we are agreeing to companies keeping, analysing and even selling our data to third parties. If you’ve just signed up to a social media app, dating website or shopping platform, you probably don’t want that data to be shared, yet with one click you may have waived the right to user autonomy, or worse, legal protection.

Every time I go the Daily Mail website I see an advertisement for a German bath company whose products I bought in November 2017. Even when clicking the option ‘don’t show this ad because it is irrelevant’ hasn’t had an iota of impact. Obviously I failed to read the license agreement / terms of purchase / privacy policy or any other online contract I hurriedly clicked away.

So thank you Yoox, Victoria Beckham, Asos, Smart Insights, Grey Men’s Skincare and the hundreds of newsletters I received this week with your updated privacy policies. Whilst I didn’t read a single terms and conditions update, I took the opportunity to unsubscribe and opt out from a fair share of marketing messages. Let’s see how companies will handle this data and if indeed the messages stop.

Photo courtesy of FashionUnited editor