I'm in the US and I can't agree with this sentiment.
1) Don't collect more information than is necessary to provide service. Why do you need to care about someone's physical address? "Shipping physical product" is a good answer. Why do you need to maintain historical usage data? "Providing user the ability to view their own usage history" seem acceptable. If any of your answers involve "Just in case", "because marketing said so", or "I don't know", then your plan smells. If you think you need to make money selling my data, think again: maybe you should be charging me enough to cover your costs and make a profit; or if you already are doing that and you still want to sell my data, the you should just stop being greedy.
2) Allow the user to fix incorrect data. I mean, you wrote it to a database at one point in time, you can issue UPDATEs to allow the user to edit information.
3) Remove data when it's no longer needed (e.g. when it's out of date, or when a user says "I'm outta here") If you can't be arsed to figure out how to properly delete data from your database, or hire someone who knows how, then I suggest you're not really dedicated to the business of creating software of value to customers.
4) Provide all of a user's data to that user. It's right there in your systems, and your software is accessing it to make decisions, provide service, etc. How hard can it be to put it all into some CSV files to download? You don't have to copy the users rows from your MySQL tables into a SQLite database that the user can download. Some files with basic explanation of content will suffice.
Yep, it raises the bar on what's "bare minimum" to get your company going. But keep in mind this is more 'line of business' than all the other requirements foisted on you by the law: things like corporate structure, taxes, occupancy permits, etc.
VC firms pair your technical ability with another founder who, presumably, has more of a business bent. That person should understand how to set your business up and how it's regulated - and if not, know where to find answers.
You sound to me like all the GOP whiners about how "regulations hurt business" who fail to see that lack of regulations hurts consumers.
1) Don't collect more information than is necessary to provide service. Why do you need to care about someone's physical address? "Shipping physical product" is a good answer. Why do you need to maintain historical usage data? "Providing user the ability to view their own usage history" seem acceptable. If any of your answers involve "Just in case", "because marketing said so", or "I don't know", then your plan smells. If you think you need to make money selling my data, think again: maybe you should be charging me enough to cover your costs and make a profit; or if you already are doing that and you still want to sell my data, the you should just stop being greedy.
2) Allow the user to fix incorrect data. I mean, you wrote it to a database at one point in time, you can issue UPDATEs to allow the user to edit information.
3) Remove data when it's no longer needed (e.g. when it's out of date, or when a user says "I'm outta here") If you can't be arsed to figure out how to properly delete data from your database, or hire someone who knows how, then I suggest you're not really dedicated to the business of creating software of value to customers.
4) Provide all of a user's data to that user. It's right there in your systems, and your software is accessing it to make decisions, provide service, etc. How hard can it be to put it all into some CSV files to download? You don't have to copy the users rows from your MySQL tables into a SQLite database that the user can download. Some files with basic explanation of content will suffice.
Yep, it raises the bar on what's "bare minimum" to get your company going. But keep in mind this is more 'line of business' than all the other requirements foisted on you by the law: things like corporate structure, taxes, occupancy permits, etc.
VC firms pair your technical ability with another founder who, presumably, has more of a business bent. That person should understand how to set your business up and how it's regulated - and if not, know where to find answers.
You sound to me like all the GOP whiners about how "regulations hurt business" who fail to see that lack of regulations hurts consumers.