INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Instapaper has temporarily shut down its service in Europe, having failed to get itself ready for the EU's new General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) rules that come into force tomorrow.Instapaper, owned by Pinterest, is a read-it-later service that lets users 'clip'
The shutdown will be particularly annoying for anyone who's clipped a bunch of articles, with the intention of reading them over the
weekend, but Instapaper says it can "generate an export of your saves" if you email support@help.instapaper.com.Instapaper delivered the bad
news to EU users in an email today:"Starting tomorrow May 24, 2018, access to the Instapaper service will be temporarily unavailable for
residents in Europe as we continue to make changes in light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which goes into effect May 25,
We apologize for any inconvenience, and we intend to restore access as soon as possible."Paper painsGDPR is designed to give you (the 'data
subject', as you're elegantly dubbed) more control over your personal information
It's also the reason your email inbox is groaning under the weight of messages from sites and services frantically updating their privacy
policies.They've good reason to be worried
Pinterest would be so slow to get its ducks in a row.The problem might well come from GDPR's requirement that companies give users a copy
of all their data in a convenient format
That could be tough if your databases have been handled by contractors who didn't leave full documentation of all their work.In February
last year, Instapaper ran into trouble and experienced 31 hours of downtime due to an undocumented file size limitation dating back to 2013
exactly what happened in a blog post
Hopefully we'll see the same transparency this time.Via The Verge
