Well, wait until you are at the receiving end. It can get nasty pretty quickly.
What does each one of your systems store exactly? Do they allow configuration of reasonable data retention policies for PII? What do your systems log? How do you make sure that only the minimum amount of PII (including user IP addresses) is logged and that the covered logs are destroyed at the end of a reasonable retention period?
How do you handle Data Subject Access Requests? Can you compile all the data related to that person in a reasonable time to send it to them?
How do you handle deletion requests? Can you name all the data storage that is affected if a deletion request comes in? Are your systems technically capable of deleting the data? What data is exempt (e.g. billing addresses can't just be deleted before the mandated archival period is over)? Do you maintain backups? Then how do you make sure that data covered by a deletion request is destroyed and stays gone even in the event of a backup recovery?
Nobody who wants to bootstrap a business wants to deal with any of this. It's an enormous time sink.
If there is one thing that is incredibly complex, it is fire codes - in no small part because these vary from town to town, or to be more precise, the height of their portable ladder trucks. Once you build higher than these, you have to plan for a second escape route.
That's not that bad of a thing if you work exclusively in one area... but good luck if you operate across the nation or, worse, internationally because everyone does things a liiiitle bit differently.
Have you ever been the responsible person for a public building, a big concert or anything of that ilk? Suuuuure, fire and work safety are easy peasy, uncomplicated and totally trivial compared to the GDPR. And the laws and regulations involved are so incredibly brief, well-written and stay consistent over a long time... o_O
/s
Even with a small pub that you run with your friend, you have to deal and comply with fire safety, toilet, public health and a whole lot of other codes.
If you can't answer the oh so complicated and nasty questions you raised, you have no business fucking around with people's personal data and it's a good thing if your business dies (would be even better if you get a slap in the neck and financially hurt for a bit - but not so much that your business fails - and you use the punishment as an impulse to rethink your ways and do better in the future. But how likely is that, given bone-headed positions like yours?!)
"I don't want to deal with it" is relatable and human - and one of the main reasons why potentially dangerous things are / have to be regulated.
> Nobody who wants to bootstrap a business wants to deal with any of this. It's an enormous time sink.
Indeed but it forces you to answer these questions and to think about them during the development process as well, maybe even enough to write decent unit and regression tests for anything authentication/authorization related before some security "researcher" siccs Claude Code or whatever on your API and pwns it.
You assume that the business is about developing software and will have a public facing API.
That's a very narrow perspective. The vast majority of businesses aren't this. Even a plumber who types up offers and invoices on a computer is subject to all of this mess.
> Even a plumber who types up offers and invoices on a computer is subject to all of this mess.
Yeah and that plumber has 1000s of customer names, addresses, phone numbers, mail addresses, in Europe maybe even SEPA Direct Debit data.
Not funny if that kind of stuff leaks, especially not if you're, say, a person with a public register block due to domestic violence or whatever (basically, one step before witness protection that gives you a whole new identity).
In Germany you have to keep your records for 8 years as a commercial entity, and 8 years is a lot of customers you deal with, if you work with private customers.
If your primary focus as an electrician, plumber or other tradesperson is SME or industry, of course, then there is far less customers.
Repeat customers, certainly, there's only so many of them you can have. I'm talking about small shops with 5-10 people heading out to service calls, and a lot of these is "throwaway" customers that need a water faucet changed or whatnot.
At least here in Germany, in most rental contracts the responsibilities are split between landlord and renter, with the landlord being responsible for the heating, the water mains and the large fusebox, but the renter has to deal with everything under the scope of "Kleinreparatur". Exchanging faucets and siphons, wall sockets, installing laundry machines and other appliances, installing lamps, that kind of stuff many people (like me) can DIY but other people (like a lot of my friends) can't or don't want to, and they call in the professionals for an hour or two. And these guys have like 4-6 service calls a day.
What does each one of your systems store exactly? Do they allow configuration of reasonable data retention policies for PII? What do your systems log? How do you make sure that only the minimum amount of PII (including user IP addresses) is logged and that the covered logs are destroyed at the end of a reasonable retention period?
How do you handle Data Subject Access Requests? Can you compile all the data related to that person in a reasonable time to send it to them?
How do you handle deletion requests? Can you name all the data storage that is affected if a deletion request comes in? Are your systems technically capable of deleting the data? What data is exempt (e.g. billing addresses can't just be deleted before the mandated archival period is over)? Do you maintain backups? Then how do you make sure that data covered by a deletion request is destroyed and stays gone even in the event of a backup recovery?
Nobody who wants to bootstrap a business wants to deal with any of this. It's an enormous time sink.