GDPR Updates

2018-06-27 12:32:15

PostgreSQL Europe stores and processes data, and therefore we had to revisit the processes as the European General Data Protection Regulation came live in May 2018.

Two areas, or services, had to be revisited, in order to be sure that we comply with the regulation.

First we store membership data for every member of PostgreSQL Europe. After carefully looking at the data, we determined that we only store the data which is required to provide this service to our members, and keep them informed - as example about renewing their membership or send information about the General Assembly.

The second, and larger area is the conference system. We always strived to only ask for the data which is necessary to enable visitors to go to our conferences. However as part of the compliance effort we decided that we can retire or anonymize certain data from past conferences, which is no longer required. In particular we will:

  • Anonymize data about t-shirt sizes
  • Anonymize data about special food / dietary needs
  • Add a flag to the registration system that a visitor does not want to appear on pictures: this will produce a visible icon on the visitor badge, and help other visitors to determine that this person wishes to remain private. And although we as a conference organizer cannot enforce that other people don’t take pictures, this will hopefully help other visitors deciding if a picture is appropriate.
  • We will no longer ask visitors for a phone number (that was already optional in the past), but we will continue asking speakers for a phone number, in order to get in touch with them if necessary. The phone number will be deleted after the conference.

 

We can’t delete certain other data, for example names and addresses on invoices, and general accounting data. These are necessary to keep our financial records intact.

For scrubbing the conference data we decided on a half-automatic process. Shortly after a conference ends, a cron job will remind organizers to cleanse the data. The admin interface provides an option for that. Using this option, all data mentioned above is anonymized or deleted, and this process can’t be reversed.