Freelancing and GDPR

nellipope

nellipope

Member
I'm a freelancer, it's great, and it's very simple.

I don't market, send newsletters nor do I retain any payment details on my clients.

The only data I hold is a name, postal address and email for invoicing which is via an online accounting system.

But I am at a complete loss as to how I become GDPR compliant?

Anyone else struggling with this?
 
I didn't know what it was until a few min ago.
I'm guessing that's what all those privacy e-mails I've been getting are for.
 
Yep! Tell me about it.

Although I am pretty sure you do not need consent if the emails are transactional as opposed to marketing.

But apparently if you hold any information on anybody, even a simple name, address and email, you have to have a GDPR policy adherence, which takes effect on the 25th.
What I can't find is a simple answer?

Do I simply email my clients with " by the way this is what I do with your info"?
 
So.....everyone has to contact everyone else to state a 'privacy policy' if you have their name and e-mail?

That one kind of passed me by.

Don't think I can be arsed doing that. ;)
 
As I understand it...
If you are retaining someones details for a legitimate business reason ( ie; they've requested a quotation or to enable you to invoice them as part of a contract of work ), you don't need their expressed permission. If you intend to market to them or offer other services.. you need them to give you permission to retain their information.

You do however need to issue a privacy statement (usually on your website) explaining how use data that you capture such as analytics, client information, emails sent through contact forms etc.. This should include details of how any data management companies you use handle this data. For example if you have a site built by me that uses a contact form linked to a CRM system (lets say SugarCRM).. you have a responsibility to get certification from myself and from Sugar that as organisations we are GDPR compliant.

This is just my take on it.. the best thing to do is to seek advice from a legal professional who is qualified to give you accurate ifacts and information.
 
As I understand it, as long as you have everything listed that you store and give them an option to remove anything that they don't want you to have (obviously can't remove stuff which might be needed for HMRC inspections such as client details/invoices) then you should be pretty much good to go. In reality though for freelancers all we generally store is contact details, invoices (both needed for HMRC) and any work we've done or had sent to us from a client (email servers might be keeping a copy).

The website side of things get more complicated because this also goes into that old EU (slightly different under UK law) thing where you need 'permission' for cookies/tracking etc too.

Am I contacting clients over what I store... nope they already know what I keep
 
Thanks everyone,

This GDPR is as clear as mud. But you have all confirmed what I thought and I share your thoughts and views on it.

I really appreciate your time.

Thankyou
 
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