PC gamers have almost too many options when it comes to titles to play, which is a great problem to have. With decades of games to choose from (and the first port of call for most indie titles, too), the options are endless. You also get the perks of (nearly always flawless) backward compatibility and console-beating graphical performance — if you've got the coin for it when you’re building your perfect kit or picking up a high-powered gaming laptop.
The whole idea of what a gaming PC is and where you can play it is shifting, too, with the rise of handheld gaming PCs like the Steam Deck. We've tried to be broad with our recommendations here on purpose; here are the best PC games you can play right now.
Tech is racing ahead while society struggles to keep up. Masha Bucher, founder and GP of Day One Ventures, built her firm around closing that gap by combining venture capital with hands-on PR to help portfolio companies not just raise money, but actually break through the noise. Day One’s been an early backer of companies like World, Superhuman, and Remote.com, with 12 […]
It’s been over 10 years since the launch of the excellent The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and nearly four years since the announcement of “the next installment in The Witcher series of video games.” Despite those long waits, developer CD Projekt Red is still insisting it will deliver the next three complete Witcher games in a short six-year window.
In a recent earnings call, CDPR VP of Business Development Michał Nowakowski suggested that a rapid release schedule would be enabled in no small part by the team’s transition away from its proprietary REDEngine to the popular Unreal Engine in 2022. At the time, CDPR said the transition to Unreal Engine would “elevate development predictability and efficiency, while simultaneously granting us access to cutting-edge game development tools.” Those considerations seemed especially important in the wake of widespread technical issues with the console versions of Cyberpunk 2077, which CDPR later blamed on REDEngine’s “in-game streaming system.”
“We’re happy with how [Unreal Engine] is evolving through the Epic team’s efforts, and how we are learning how to make it work within a huge open-world game, as [The Witcher 4] is meant to be,” Nowakowski said in the recent earnings call. “In a way, yes, I do believe that further games should be delivered in a shorter period of time—as we had stated before, our plan still is to launch the whole trilogy within a six-year period, so yes, that would mean we would plan to have a shorter development time between TW4 and TW5, between TW5 and TW6 and so on.”
Bitcoin regained price levels above $90,000 after trading beneath this key zone for the majority of the past two weeks. Within this period, the premier cryptocurrency saw a decline to as low as $80,600, marking a more than 10% deviation from the aforementioned support.
As the price stands fairly over $90,000, there seems to be a recovery underway. However, a closer monitoring of on-chain activity has revealed that the reality is diametrically opposite to widespread expectation.
LTH-STH SOPR Ratio Spikes To 2.63 — What This Means
In a recent QuickTake post on CryptoQuant, the on-chain analytics platform Arab Chain reveals a shift within the internal structures of the Bitcoin market. This report revolves around readings obtained from the Binance: BTC SOPR Ratio (LTH – STH) metric, which assesses and compares the profit-taking behavior of Bitcoin’s long-term holders (LTH) to that of its short-term holders (STH).
Arab Chain highlights that the LTH-STH ratio recently saw a spike to 2.63, a reading which marks the highest level put in since August. Notably, this spike in the SOPR index comes amid Bitcoin’s rise to around $90,000, signaling an underlying spike in LTH sell-off despite this modest rebound.
This notion is confirmed by the Long-Term Holder SOPR itself, which reportedly to 2.58, indicating that members of Bitcoin’s most influential trend setters are currently exiting the market in deep profits. Normally, the sharp move in the LTH–STH ratio, especially one that causes the establishment of a multi-month high, usually represents a period of selling pressure that typically precedes price corrections. However, the current situation steers slightly away from this standard.
‘Profit-Taking Phase May Go On For Several Weeks’ — Analyst
As the LTH SOPR reads 2.58, the STH SOPR stands at levels around the 0.98 mark, suggesting that the flagship cryptocurrency’s short-term holders are selling off their holdings either at break-even or even with some losses incurred.
The market imbalance, therefore, reveals itself in that “long-term investors are capturing substantial profits and capitalizing on previous rallies to sell off, while short-term investors are unable to achieve clear gains.” Arab Chain explains that if the Bitcoin price decline should intensify, there could be additional acceleration dedicated to its fall down south.
Historically, widening gaps between LTH and STH SOPR have often preceded defined movements in BTC’s market cycle. This behavior, according to Arab Chain, reveals that the market is likely entering a typical “cash-for-profit” phase, where its major holders sell off their holdings. Seeing as a surge of an almost comparable magnitude last took place in August, the firm conjectures that the market could see a major price reset, as opposed to the minor price fluctuation investors may be anticipating.
As of this writing, Bitcoin is worth about $90,652, recording no significant movement over the past day.
When someone creates a US patent, they go through a review process to stop the most blatant copies from previous patents or pre-existing work. After this, you may still have bad patents get through, which can be removed through litigation or publicly accessible methods such as Inter Partes Review (IPR). The latter of which is planned to be changed as we know it in the near future.
IPR is a method where an individual can claim that an existing patent is invalid due to pre-existing work, such as something the individual should have creative ownership over. While there is always the litigation method of removing blatantly fraudulent patents, a small business or the average person is unlikely to have the funds.
New regulations are changing how IPRs can be filed in some substantial ways. Now, if someone files an IPR, they give up the right to future litigation on their rights over a patent. This is obviously not ideal for someone who may have their own products on the line if an IPR is to fail. Additionally, IPRs will no longer be able to be even tried if there are existing cases against the patent, even under poor previous cases. While this change is meant to increase the efficiency of the patent office, there are some serious consequences that must be looked into either way. The patent office also cites IPRs being beneficial to larger organizations rather than the smaller businesses, though you can make your own conclusions based on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s arguments here.
Hackaday certainly can not give any legal advice on how this change will affect you, but there are cases given by both sides that may persuade you to write to your legal representatives if you live in the States. Even still, we here at Hackaday have seen our fair share of patent trolls causing issues. If you want a case of blatant patent shenanigans check out these 3D printing layers that promise improved strength!
Every few minutes an airplane may fly over your head, maybe more than one. If you live close to an airport, the air traffic in your area is especially heavy. Services like Flightradar24 show information about aircraft in the air with surprising accuracy because they get data using the ADS-B protocol. You can collect that data yourself, and here we will show how.
Of course, everyone has flown on a plane or at least seen one. These large metal birds circle the globe and carry hundreds of millions of people to different parts of the world. That wasn’t always the case. Just 100 years ago people mostly moved by land and there were no highly reliable flying machines. After planes were invented and commercial flights began, it became clear that we needed a way to track aircraft in the sky, otherwise accidents would be unavoidable. Radar and visual observation are not enough for this, so radio communication came into use. Now every aircraft has an aviation transponder on board. It makes life much easier for dispatchers and pilots, as the aircraft sends data from onboard sensors and receives instructions from the ground while in flight.
Put simply, an aviation transponder is a two-way radio device that does two things:
1. Answers queries from ground stations: when an air traffic controller requests data, the transponder replies automatically. A query for data is also called interrogation.
2. Acts as an airborne radio beacon: in this mode the transponder periodically broadcasts information about itself, for example position or speed.
Modes
There are different generations or modes of transponders. Each was created for different purposes and has its own signal structure. Although newer modes keep the features of the older ones, the signal protocols are not mutually compatible. There are five main modes:
1. Mode A: transmits only the aircraft’s identification code. This code can be hard-programmed into the transponder or assigned by the dispatcher before flight. In practice Mode A was mostly used to track which aircraft was at which airport.
2. Mode C: developed later, it allowed tracking not only the aircraft ID but also flight altitude. Its main advantage was that altitude could be obtained automatically without asking the pilot.
3. Mode S: this is the modern mode used on about 99% of all aircraft today. It allows not only reading sensor data from the aircraft but also sending data back to the plane. In Mode S an aircraft has full two-way communication with ground stations. ADS-B, which we will look at today, is part of this mode.
4. Mode 4 and Mode 5: these are more advanced but used only by the military. Both are much better protected (that is, they have some security, unlike the older modes), so they are not something we can play with.
A careful reader will notice we did not include Mode B or Mode D in the list. Both existed only briefly, so it makes little sense to discuss them here.
ADS-B
If you read the description of Mode S closely, you’ll notice that Mode S messages are normally sent by the transponder in response to a ground station query. All of them except ADS-B. ADS-B stands for Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast. In plain English that means it is an automatic flight-tracking system. The word “Broadcast” means the messages are sent out to everyone, not to a specific recipient, and that lets us receive them.
Many people treat ADS-B as a separate transponder mode on the same level as Mode A, C, or S, but actually ADS-B is just a part of Mode S. An ADS-B message is simply a Mode S message with type 17.
Types of Mode S messages
We will focus on ADS-B (type 17) in this article, but it helps to know about other Mode S message types for context:
All-call reply (type 11): the transponder replies to a ground interrogation with a unique 24-bit identifier. This number is usually programmed at the factory and does not change, although in military contexts it may be altered.
ACAS short and long replies (type 0/16): messages used by collision-avoidance systems. If a transponder detects another aircraft nearby it will send alerts to other systems that can prevent a mid-air collision.
Altitude and identity replies (type 4/5): messages containing altitude and the call sign (the so-called squawk code that the pilot enters before flight).
Comm-B (type 20/21): messages with readings from onboard sensors, planned route, and other data useful for aircraft control.
ACAS is especially clever in how it works, but discussing it in detail would take us beyond this article.
All Mode S transmissions to aircraft use 1030 MHz (uplink), and transmissions from aircraft to the ground use 1090 MHz.
The radio transmission itself is not encrypted. It carries a lot of useful information about the aircraft’s position, altitude, speed, and other parameters. That is how services like Flightradar24 started making aircraft information available to everyone for free. These services collect data from many sensors installed by volunteers around the world. You can become one of those volunteers too. All you need is to sign up and get a receiver from a service operator for installation.
Physical structure of the signal
ADS-B signals are transmitted by aircraft on 1090 MHz, just like the other Mode S signals. The other frequency, 1030 MHz (uplink), is not needed for ADS-B because ADS-B transmissions are sent without being asked.
Pulse-Position Modulation (PPM) is used to encode the signal. In basic terms, the transmitter sends bits over the air that can be read by sampling the signal every N microseconds. On ADS-B each bit lasts 0.5 microseconds, so you can sample every 0.5 μs, see whether the signal level is high or low at each moment, record that, then convert the result into bytes to reconstruct the original message. That’s the theory, in practice it’s more challenging.
Packet structure
If you take the raw sampled data you first get a bit of a mess that must be parsed to extract useful information. The messages themselves have a clear structure, so if you can find repeated parts in the data stream you can reconstruct the whole packet. A packet consists of a preamble and the data payload. The preamble lasts 8 μs, and then the data follows for either 56 or 112 μs.
The preamble is especially important because all aircraft transmit on the same frequency and their signals can arrive at the receiver at the same time. Loss of overlapping signals is handled simply: if a receiver fails to catch a message, some other receiver will. There are many receivers and they cover all inhabited land on Earth, so if a particular signal is too weak for one receiver it will be loud enough for another. This approach doesn’t guarantee every single signal will be caught, but ADS-B messages are transmitted repeatedly, so losing some packets is not a disaster.
We already said each bit is encoded as 0.5 μs, but to make reception easier a convention was introduced where one real bit is encoded using two half-microsecond elements. A logical one is encoded as “1 then 0”, and a logical zero as “0 then 1”. For example, data bits 1011 would be transmitted as 10011010. This does not complicate the receiver much, but it protects against noise and makes the signal more reliable. Without this doubling, a sequence of zeros would look like silence. With it the receiver always detects activity, even when zeros are sent.
Structure of useful data
Suppose we decoded the signal and found a message. Now we need to decode the payload and filter out unwanted messages (that is, all Mode S messages except ADS-B).
The ADS-B message length we care about is 112 μs, which corresponds to 112 bits (thanks to the two-half-microsecond coding!). The message divides into five main blocks:
1. DF (Downlink Format) – the format code, 5 bits. For ADS-B this is always 17.
2. CA (Transponder capability) – type of transponder and its capability level, 3 bits. This tells a controller what data can be requested from this transponder. This field can be 0, 4, 5, or 6. Values 1–3 and 7 are reserved for future use. 0 means a first-level transponder, usually without ACAS. 4 means a second-level (or higher) transponder that can send altitude (i.e., supports Mode C and Mode S) but does not have ACAS. 5 and 6 are like 4 but with ACAS support: 6 indicates ACAS may be enabled, 5 indicates ACAS may be present but disabled.
3. ICAO — unique aircraft number, 24 bits. This number identifies the signal sender. It is typically programmed once at the factory and does not change during operation, although some people know how to change it. Military transponders follow different rules, so anything can happen there.
4. ME (Message) – the actual payload with data about altitude, speed, or other information. Length is 56 bits. We will look at this block in detail below.
5. PI (Parity/Interrogator ID) – checksum, 24 bits.
The ME field
The ME field is the most interesting part for us because it carries coordinates, speed, altitude, and other data from onboard sensors. Since 56 bits are not enough to carry all possible data at once, each message has a type indicated by the first five bits of ME. In other words, there is a nested format: Mode S uses a certain message type to indicate ADS-B, and ADS-B uses its own internal type to say what data is inside.
ADS-B defines 31 data types in total, but we will review only the main ones. Type 1-4: identification messages. They contain the call sign and other registration/identification information (for example, whether this is a light aircraft or a heavy one). These call signs are shown on airport displays and usually reflect the flight number. A decoded message looks approximately like this:
Type 5-8: ground position. These messages are used to know where and on which runway the aircraft is located. The message may include latitude, longitude, speed, and heading. Example decoded message:
Type 9-19: airborne position (usually transmitted together with altitude). It is important to understand that you will not always find latitude and longitude in the usual long numeric form in these messages, instead a compact notation is used.
Type 19: aircraft velocity.
We could go bit-by-bit through the structure of each message, but that takes a long time. If you are really interested you can find ready ADS-B parsers on GitHub and inspect the formats there. For our purpose, however, diving deeper into the protocol’s details isn’t necessary right now, because we are not going to transmit anything yet.
CPR or how to make a simple thing more complex
To describe a location, we usually use latitude and longitude. A 32-bit floating number can store them with about seven decimal places, which is accurate down to a few centimeters. If we don’t need that much detail and are fine with accuracy of just tens of centimeters, both latitude and longitude together could be stored in about 56 bits. That would have been enough, and there would be no need for special “compressed” coordinate tricks. Since an airplane moves at more than 100 meters per second, centimeter-level accuracy is useless anyway. This makes it strange why the protocol designers still chose the compact method.
CPR (Compact Position Reporting) is designed specifically to send coordinates compactly. Part of CPR was already visible in the coordinate example earlier. Because it’s impossible to compress a lot of data into a small field without loss, the designers split the data into parts and send them in two passes with packets labeled “even” and “odd”. How do we recover normal coordinates from this? We will show the idea.
Imagine all aircraft flying in a 2D plane. Divide that plane into two different grids and call them the even grid and the odd grid. Make the even grid 4×4 and the odd grid 5×5. Suppose we want to transmit a position that in a 16×16 grid is at (9, 7). If we had one grid we would just send 9 and 7 and an operator could locate us on the map. In CPR there are two grids, though.
In these grids we would represent our position (9, 7) as (1, 3) on the even grid and (4, 2) on the odd grid. When an operator receives both messages, they must align the two grids.
If you overlay the grids with the received coordinates, the point of intersection is the true location.
We described the algorithm without math so you can imagine how coordinates are reconstructed from two parts. The real grids are far more complex than our toy example and look like the image below.
A simple way to receive ADS-B
Now that we understand the main parts of the protocol, we can try to receive a real signal. To receive any such signal you need three basic things: an antenna, a receiver, and a PC.
Antenna
Start with the most important item, which is the antenna. The choice depends on many factors, including frequency, directionality of the signal, and the environment where it travels. Our signal is transmitted at 1090 MHz, and we will receive it outdoors. The simplest antenna (but not the most efficient) is a straight rod (a monopole). You can make such an antenna from a piece of wire. The main thing is to calculate the right length. Antenna length depends on the wavelength of the signal you want to receive. Wavelength is the distance between two neighboring “peaks” of the wave.
Lambda (λ) is the wavelength. You get it from frequency with the formula λ = C / f, where C is the speed of light and f is the signal frequency. For 1090 MHz it is about 27.5 cm. If you take a metal rod of that length you get a full-wave antenna, which you can safely shorten by half or by four to get a half-wave or quarter-wave antenna, respectively. These different designs have different sensitivity, so I recommend a half-wave antenna, which should be roughly 13.75 cm long.
We won’t build our own antenna here. It is not the simplest task and we already had a suitable antenna. You might use radio handheld antennas if you receive outdoors and there isn’t too much interference. We use a simple vertical coil-loaded whip antenna. It behaves like a whip but is shorter because of the coil.
You can measure antenna characteristics with a special vector network analyzer that generates different frequencies and checks how the antenna reacts.
The output from NanoVNA looks complicated at first, but it’s simple to interpret. To know if an antenna suits a particular frequency, look at the yellow SWR line. SWR stands for standing wave ratio. This shows what part of the signal the antenna radiates into the air and what part returns. The less signal that returns, the better the antenna works at that frequency. On the device we set marker 1 to 1090 MHz and SWR there was 1.73, which is quite good. Typically an antenna is considered good if SWR is about 1 (and not more than 2).
Receiver
For the receiver we will use an SDR dongle. It’s basically a radio controlled by software rather than a mechanical dial like old receivers. Any SDR adapter will work for ADS-B reception, from the cheap RTL-SDR to expensive devices like BladeRF. Cheap options start around $30, so anyone can get involved. We will use a BladeRF micro, as it supports a wide frequency range and a high sampling rate.
Putting it all together
Once you have an antenna and an SDR, find a place with few obstructions and low interference. We simply drove about ten kilometers out of town. Signals near 1 GHz (which includes ADS-B) don’t travel much past the horizon, so if you don’t live near an airport and there are obstacles around you may not catch anything.
To inspect the radio spectrum we use GQRX. This program is available for Linux and macOS. On Windows we recommend SDR#. In Ubuntu GQRX can be installed from the standard repositories:
bash$ > sudo apt update
bash$ > sudo apt install -y gqrx
Then increase the volume, select your SDR as the input source, and press the large Start button. If everything is set up correctly, your speakers will start hissing loudly enough to make you jump, after which you can mute the sound with the Mute button in the lower right corner.
You can choose the receive frequency at the top of the screen, so set it to 1.090.000, which equals 1090 MHz. After that you will see something like the screenshot below.
The short vertical strips near the center are ADS-B signals, which stand out from the background noise. If you don’t see them, try changing the gain settings on the Input Controls tab on the right. If that does not help, open FFT Settings and adjust the Plot and WF parameters. You can also try rotating the antenna or placing it in different orientations.
dump1090
When you get stable reception in GQRX you can move to the next step.
In practice, people who want to receive and decode Mode S signals usually use an existing program. A common open-source tool demodulates and decodes almost all Mode S signals and even outputs them in a neat table. To verify that our setup works correctly, it’s best to start with something that’s known to work, which is dump1090.
To install it, clone the repository from GitHub and build the binary. It’s very simple:
After that you should have the binary. If you have an RTL-SDR you can use dump1090 directly with it, but we have a BladeRF which requires a bit more work for support.
First, install the driver for your SDR. Drivers are available in the repositories of most distributions, just search for them. Second, you will need to flash special firmware onto the SDR. For BladeRF those firmware files are available on the Nuand website. Choose the file that matches your BladeRF version.
Next, download and build the decoding program for your SDR:
git clone https://github.com/Nuand/bladeRF-adsb
cd bladeRF-adsb/bladeRF_adsb
make
Then flash the firmware into the BladeRF. You can do this with the bladerf-cli package:
bash$ > bladeRF-cli -l ~/Downloads/adsbxA4.rbf
Now run dump1090 in one terminal and bladeRF-adsb in another (the commands below are examples from our setup):
If everything is correct, in the dump1090 window you will see many hexadecimal lines, those are Mode S messages that still need to be decoded and filtered.
If you remove --raw from the dump1090 startup arguments, the program will automatically decode messages and display them in a table.
Summary
Now you’ve seen how aircraft transponders work, what ADS-B actually is, and how signals at 1090 MHz can be received and decoded with simple equipment. None of this requires expensive tools, just an antenna, a software-defined radio and some patience. Once it’s ready, you can watch the same kind of live flight data that powers big services like Flightradar24. We kept the heavy math out of the way so it stays approachable for everyone, but still leaves you with something useful to take away. It’s possible to push yourself further and do it the hard way without relying on tools like dump1090, but that path takes a lot more time, patience, and willingness to grind through the details.
Cold calling and emailing have always been popular and effective techniques of sales and communication with prospective clients. It is a way how brands can reach out to potential clients who may not be aware of your service or product offerings. It is a technique of creating brand awareness and lead generation. However, many customers see these activities as spamming. This sales technique has earned a bad reputation for simply exploiting or misusing the personal data of individuals under the pretext of business.
People are often bombarded with irrelevant emails and sales calls that were of no interest to customers. This led to the practice of cold emailing and calling being seen as spam. Recognizing the growing misuse of personal data, the GDPR Regulation established strong measures to ensure the protection and privacy of people’s private data. Covering the requirements of GDPR, we have explained whether or not email and cold calling is allowed under GDPR and how organizations can ensure compliance while conducting such actives.
Are cold email marketing and cold calling allowed under GDPR?
GDPR Regulation was established to protect and preserve the rights of individuals and secure their personal data. That said, the regulation sets certain guidelines to ensure the private data of individuals are not misused in the pretext of business. But it is important to note and understand that the GDPR regulation does not stop email marketing or cold emails. However, the guidelines outlined does discourage the misuse of personal data.
The regulation is about protecting personal data and ending unethical digital marketing practices to protect individuals’ privacy. So, to simply put cold calling and cold email marketing activities are allowed under GDPR, provided appropriate guidelines are followed by the organization. However, anyone violating the rules will have to pay a hefty price for it. So, it is just that the businesses have to be a bit more careful about the methods they adopt to gather, manage, store and use the personal data of citizens of the EU.
What does the GDPR Regulation say about email marketing and cold-calling activities?
Organizations must follow certain guidelines as outlined in the GDPR Regulation to ensure compliance in their sales activity like cold emailing or calls. GDPR clearly states that the processing of personal data is only allowed if either the data subject has provided consent or there is a legal basis or legitimate interest of the organization (controller) to send e-mails.
Recital 47 of the GDPR states that the law also applies to the processing of personal data used for direct marketing as a legitimate interest of the controller. However, it is important to note that e-mail marketing is allowed without consent for existing customers. But in case the customers wish to not receive any further information by newsletter or e-mail, the customer can object to processing for marketing purposes.
According to Article 21(2), (3) GDPR, the data subject always has the right to object to the processing of personal data for direct marketing purposes. If the data subject objects, the controller has to stop the processing for marketing purposes. But they can continue to process the data for performing their contract.
It is also important to understand that the legitimate interest of the controller to process data for marketing purposes cannot overweigh the objection of the data subject. Regardless of whether the organization involves in the activity of cold calling or cold emailing, based on its legitimate interest or consent, they are required to adhere to the data subject’s right to be informed.
How can organizations ensure compliance while sending cold emails or in cold calling?
While it is clear that organizations are allowed to use the technique of cold calling or cold emailing for sales, but they are required to follow certain rules and ensure that the activities are GDPR compliant. So, here are some ways how businesses can ensure compliance with GDPR when sending cold emails or in cold calling.
Legit reason and targeted prospects
Organizations should have a legit reason for processing personal data. They should have a legal basis or legitimate interest to send e-mails. Also, organizations must ensure that the data they collect and use should be only if it is strictly necessary for business. So, for instance, if your business plans to simply just send mails then avoid collecting additional data like address and phone numbers. Plus ensure that you only approach well-targeted prospects. So, in this scenario, people sharing views on products similar to what your business offers can be your potential clients and so be considered as target prospects.
Businesses are allowed to contact only those prospects who are likely interested in their products and service offerings and likely to purchase or avail them. If the prospects are not relevant then you might be breaching the GDPR. Businesses are required to be very selective about the data they collect and the prospects they choose to communicate. If this is done right businesses will definitely not get penalized by the GDPR.
Explain how the prospect’s email was acquired
To cover all grounds of GDPR the organization must know how and from where they acquired the emails. Even if it is a list of emails bought from a third party, organizations must ensure that the database was collected and used in a GDPR compliant manner. Businesses are required to keep a record of how all the data was collected and is processed. It is also important to note that organizations must have in place measures to ensure that if a data subject demands deletion of their data or objects the processing of data, then it must be done immediately. Simply providing an unsubscribe link is not enough but the data must be immediately deleted.
Principles for Processing Personal Data
Organizations can process personal data under the following circumstances as outlined in the GDPR
Consent-When the organization gets appropriate consent from the prospect to process their personal data.
Contract-When there is an official and legit contract established between the organizations (controller) and the prospect that requires the processing of the personal data.
Legal obligation- When the organization has a legal obligation and by law is required to process the personal data of prospect.
Public Interest- When there is a need to process personal data which is in the public interest, an organization can process personal data.
Protect vital interest: When there is a vital mutual interest to protect and requires data processing organizations can process personal data.
Legitimate interest:When there is a legitimate interest and where both the parties will benefit, an organization can process personal data.
Whatever be the reason for contacting prospects and processing their data, it is important that the organization informs and communicates the same to the prospect their emails. This is an essential step in the process of GDPR Compliance.
Explain Legal Interest in the Email
Legal interest is one of the six lawful data processing reasons outlined in the GDPR. Whenever the processing of personal data is not a lawful obligation but for the benefit of both the prospect and organization, then it must be justified and communicated to the prospect in the mail accordingly. Organizations need to prove that there is a legitimate interest in contacting the prospect and that may include-
The product and service offerings of the organization are of the prospect’s interest and support their need.
The prospect asked for information or searched for details related to your product and service.
The prospect is up for expansion in an area that is relevant to your product or service.
The prospect is your existing or previous client from the same industry.
The business got to know about the prospect from your network.
The products and services offered, support the prospects of investment and growth.
It is important to note that the term legal interest for processing data can only be legal if the interest also accounts for the person’s right to privacy. Again an organization cannot hold personal data longer than needed. When an organization collects personal data like an email address, they need to inform the individual that the data has been stored for future marketing purposes and also provide a legitimate interest in storing and processing the data. The email should include a copy of
A statement informing the prospect how their data was collected and will be processed.
Provide a time frame or retention period for storing their data.
Provide a brief explanation of why the data is processed.
Step-by-step guidelines to the receiver for changing or objecting to the processing or deletion of their data.
Provide a copy of the Disclaimer for the cold email.
Process of Unsubscribing
If the organization is up from sending cold emails, they also need to provide the recipients an option to opt-out of the emailing list. Organizations are required to provide an easy, quick unsubscribe option with an ‘unsubscribe link’ added at the bottom of your email to ensure compliance. This is the fundamental element and right of the recipient in the cold email. The organization should even provide a guide for those who wish to delete their personal data from the records. So, if the receiver asks you to delete their data, then it is easily deleted from your records, backups, and other places of storage. Organizations must ensure that the information provided must be clear and steps to opt-out must be easy.
Frequently Update the Database
GDPR also requires organizations to keep their database updated and delete any data that is no longer required or in use. This simply means that organizations should have in place a data retention policy to regularly update their database and prevent storing of personal data longer than required. So, businesses must not hold any leads for a long time or incorrect contact details. This is one of the most essential and core components to ensure cold emails are GDPR compliant.
CRM database must be regular, up-to-date, and should be traceable in terms of how the personal data was collected, processed, and stored. So, remove the leads that are no longer require and replace them with active contacts with correct contact details. An organization must also secure its database by taking necessary measures for security. Measures such as having in place physical access controls, data access controls, system access controls, input controls, transmission control, and segregation of data, backups, are some measures that will help to secure the data.
Strong Data Security
The purpose of the GDPR Regulation is mainly to ensure data protection and privacy of personal data. So, that said, when sending cold emails organizations must ensure systems applications, and networks used for mailing and storing of data must be GDPR Compliant. The data collected and processed should be encrypted and the ones that are stored should be retained for only as long as when necessary. Organizations must also keep a record of the data collected, processed, and used while establishing a level of authorization for every activity.
Prompt Response to Request/Queries
When organizations run a cold email campaign it is natural that the recipient will have queries regarding your mails or may possibly even request for an unsubscribe or deletion of their data or even ask for their information or correction of their data. So, organizations are required to have in place a system that facilitates prompt response to any such request or queries. The GDPR Regulation gives the citizen of the EU the right to information, right to access, right to rectification, right to deletion, right to restrict processing, right to data portability, right object, and even right to prevent automated decision making. So, with such right given to the citizens, organizations are required to oblige to their request and respond to it at the earliest
The aim to establish GDPR is to not just simply abolish the cold calling and emailing strategy but to ensure that the organizations appropriately secure the data. The regulation was not designed to limit the way business generates leads, but to ensure appropriate measures are taken to communicate with prospects and prevent misuse of personal data. With GDPR in place, gone are the days of spamming people with random business advertisements.
GDPR is more focused on protecting and preserving the rights of citizens of the EU. The GDPR regulation encourages businesses to build genuine connections with people who may be interested in the business offering. This adds more accuracy and relevance to the emailing process.
The regulation should be seen as an effort to secure and preserve the rights of people and also for quality lead generation. GDPR compliant cold emails will eventually help organizations close deals faster as the list of prospects will be more relevant and accurate when purchased while ensuring compliance.
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