Show HN: GDPR Shield – Block EU users from accessing your website | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: GDPR Shield – Block EU users from accessing your website

20 pointsniko00111 comments

While I love the EU's new data privacy regulation from a user's perspective, it's a nightmare for businesses to achieve compliance, because of the (sometimes intentionally) vague language of the law. And even if you pay an experienced lawyer to draft the policies and procedures required by GDPR, there's a very real residual risk of predatory law firms collecting penalties from mass-mailed cease-and-desist letters based on technicalities. Even if your business isn't located within the EU, you are required to comply with GDPR because the location of the user matters.

I've built a tool that blocks users who are trying to access your website from within the EU as a short-cut to compliance, which makes sense if your business isn't reliant on EU users and you don't want to spend thousands in legal fees to achieve GDPR compliance.

You can check it out here: https://www.gdpr-shield.io

Except GDPR also covers EU citizens outside of the EU, so this service is useless.

Amazing idea. Thank you for doing this.

Indeed, I feel like europeans must prohibited from using my services, if they're making unnaceptable demands through their regulation malpractices.

If that would gain popularity in the US, it were yet another for Europeans not to visit the US. You couldn't reasonably prepare your trip, because you cannot get up local businesses. Of course VPN is cheap and simple but why bother if you are not forced too. You can spend your travel money elsewhere.

https://www.gdpr-shield.io/ gives me a `503 Service Unavailable`. But maybe that's the point, as I'm trying to access it from Germany?

Even if I am not presently outside the EU, I might want to browse your products so that when I do go outside the EU, I will be able to buy such a product from you.

A website that would do this is a huge sign that I should look for the said product somewhere else.

I recently wanted to check the menu of one of the top 10 US restaurant/cafe chains (which only has locations within the US) while I was abroad and was surprised that they block all non-US traffic. I completely agree that "actual GDPR-compliance" is always superior, but some companies have spent months preparing for GDPR, involving their engineering and legal team. For some, outright avoiding the headache and potential financial fallout if they get something wrong can be the better option, even if it may mean losing a few potential customers.

I would use this for my websitew, which get few EU visitors;however, it'll be cheaper to just use https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-databases which I was hoping to avoid, but this is too pricey to be worth it when we can simply code a bit and have pay a lower fee.

Lol.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com