Should email addresses be anonymized/pseudonymized under GDPR?
<p>GDPR states recommendation to pseudonymise or even anonymise Personal Data. A lot — most of — web sites and services require email address on signup.</p>

<p>Should, from the Data Controller's point of view, emails be either anonymised or pseudonymised?</p>

<p>To put it simple, <strong>I run a website which stores users' emails; can I store them in the DB in plaintext?</strong></p>

<p>The GDPR does not regulate <em>specific</em> security measures beyond making recommendations about what you should considder.</p>

<p>It requires you to evalute <strong>risks</strong> and, if necessary, implement security measures to mitigate those risks. Doing a DPIA (Data Protection Impact Assessment) to identify levels of risk may be helpful.</p>

<p>To do a DPIA, one obviously need to know the website and what personal data it process. Only you can do that.</p>

<p>As an example, I would say that if you run a website for sharing cupcake recipes, you probably would <em>not</em> need to encrypt the emails. If, on the other hand, you run a website were AIDS-patients share experiences, exposing a user's email address to a third part would be very harmful to the individual, and you should probably implement additional layers of security, such as encryption.</p>

privacy european-union gdpr data-protection data-storage