GDPR and The Cookie Thief

Transcript of the Video


Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Suzanne Dibble here, data protection law expert, coming to you raw and uncut from an A380 upper deck, about to head out on a 13-hour flight.

Now, for those of you who want to play a little game and guess where I'm going, then have your guess in the comments below, and the first person ... No, I'm not going to say that! I will choose at random a person who gets it right, and I will give away a free copy of my GDPR pack. So, where am I about to go on my 13-hour flight?

That's not the video for today, but it is a little bit out of the box today, and the theme is relevant, because I've just been in the airport lounge, and I would like to read to you a poem, a poem called "The Cookie Thief" by Valerie Cox.

"A woman was waiting at an airport one night, with several long hours before her flight. She hunted for a book in the airport shops, bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop."

"She was engrossed in her book but happened to see, that the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be, grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between, which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene."

"So she munched the cookies and watched the clock, as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock. She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by, thinking, 'If I wasn't so nice, I would blacken his eye.'"

"With each cookie she took, he took one too. When only one was left, she wondered what would he do. With a smile on his face and a nervous laugh, he took the last cookie and broke it in half."

 "He offered her half, as he ate the other, she snatched it from him and thought, 'Oooh, brother. This guy has some nerve and he's also rude; why he didn't even show any gratitude.'"

"She had never known when she had been so galled, and sighed with relief when her flight was called. She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate, refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate."

"She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat, then she sought her book, which was almost complete. As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise, there was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes."

"If mine are here, she moaned in despair, the others were his, and he tried to share. Too late to apologize, she realized with grief, that she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief."

Now, why am I sharing that poem? Well, aside from the fact that I've been at an airport now and, no, I didn't pinch anybody's cookies. It seems to me that reality is often perception, or rather; our perceptions are our own reality. I've seen over the course of the last five weeks in the group that a lot of people, their reality of GDPR is completely different to other people's reality. We've had the people in who are panicking about things and one poor lady who was even thinking of closing her business down. We've had the people on the other side of the fence who think it's just not bothering with. This is for big businesses and small businesses don't need to comply. And, we've had every variant in between.

I personally, as you know, embrace GDPR for many reasons, one of which is as a consumer, I'm delighted that big companies are going to have to be more respectful to my data, but also as a small business owner, I welcome the opportunity to just be better at looking after my own customers' data, particularly on the marketing side. For me, my perception of reality is that GDPR is a great thing.

I've just loved listening to the varied perceptions of reality within the group. I'm just thrilled with the discussion. I'm not at all attempting to stop that. I think it's a very valid discussion. I'm certainly not here to say that my perception of reality should be everybody's perception of reality, but it's very interesting to note how people are coming at it in so many different ways.

So, that's it. I'm not going to say anything more tonight, because I'm going to have to go and take my stuff off and get relaxed for this 13-hour flight. But if you want to guess where I'm going to, if I've not told you already, because I have told some people, then pop a comment in the video below and I will choose a person who has the right answer at random, and you will win a free GDPR pack.

So, there you go. Oh, just one important thing to say ... Actually, I'm going to do a separate video on this as well. If you bought the pack before the price rise on Friday, well done if you have. We are aware that some of you are finding it difficult to log in to the membership site, so we are on that.

Now, if you go and log out and then try to log in with a different browser, or actually Veronica has a very good way of doing it that I'm hoping she'll post in the comments below. I'll tag her and ask her to do that for you. But if you could try that as the first port of call, that would be brilliant.

If that is still not working for you, then what we'll do is we'll do an email with links to the documents, but if you try that as the first port of call, that would be great. Okay?

We're still aware that we've got some payment problems. Lots of orders are coming through. Probably 10% of sales are just not going through for whatever reason, so do email [email protected] and we will look into that as soon as we can for you.

So, final reminder, the price goes up on Friday at midnight, so ... i.e., Thursday is your last day to buy the pack at the introductory price. Details are all in the pinned post, so if you've not yet checked that out, go and do that now.

But, I will see you, hopefully, refreshed after my 13-hour flight, and I will be continuing to do a daily video for you whilst I am on my travels. So, I will bid you good-night for now and I'll check in tomorrow.