The U.K.’s digital minister, Matt Hancock, announced on Monday that citizens there will soon be able to ask Facebook and other tech companies to completely erase any history of their actions online, Reuters reports. The new rules will go into effect by the time the U.K. leaves the EU and are meant to match the EU’s “right to be forgotten” general data protection regulation (GDPR), which goes into law in 2018. The new laws will also mean that online companies will have to explicitly ask people for their permission to collect their online data instead of just asking them to check a box that they agree to the site’s terms.
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