The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) will be in force from 25 May 2018. In preparing for GDPR, BulkSMS wishes to provide our clients with the assurance that we are working toward ensuring compliance with the GDPR prior to the regulation’s enforcement date.

GDPR is to replace the existing EU Data Protection Directive (also known as Directive 95/46/EC) which has been in effect since December 1995. Whereas the EU Data Protection Directive provide regulatory guidelines for individual EU member states to implement their own data protection laws, the GDPR provides data protection regulations for all EU member states. With the United Kingdom due to exit from the EU in March 2019, the UK’s Data Protection Bill seeks to apply GDPR standards to the UK context.

GDPR is applicable to all our clients in the EU member states. These regulations also apply to clients in EU countries that send SMS messages to recipients across EU country borders and to countries outside the EU. In essence, GDPR requires organisations to prioritise data protection and have operational processes and technical systems in place for processing personal data on natural persons.

For BulkSMS, GDPR means that we need to securely manage and process client data and have appropriate technical and organisational measures in place for the processing of data via our SMS platform. A further consideration for BulkSMS is how we securely process client data across international borders when providing business and technical support relating to the provision of our mobile messaging service.

We wish to assure our client that BulkSMS is well on the way to GDPR compliance. We have conducted a GDPR readiness assessment and have begun building on existing data protection policies and operational and technical measures to ensure we comply with GDPR requirements for data protection. Any operational or technical changes that are required on our side will be ready and done well before the due date of May 2018.

For more information about BulkSMS’s compliance with GDPR, please contact our Data Protection Officer, Dr Pieter Streicher: Managing Director at BulkSMS.com on privacy@bulkSMS.com or contact our offices.