Thailand's PDPA: The Definitive Guide
Thailand's PDPA: The Definitive Guide
What is the PDPA?
Thailand’s new PDPA, or Personal Data Protection Act, is a comprehensive, opt-in data privacy law that guarantees individual rights to more than 48M Thai internet users ( 70% of its total population). It’s Thailand’s first consolidated privacy law and shares many of the same principles as the GDPR — and the same name as Singapore's 2014 privacy law.
Thailand's PDPA was approved by the Thai National Legislative Assembly on February 28, 2019 and made effective May 28, 2019. An official English translation of the PDPA is still pending.
The law initially granted a one-year grace period for companies to comply. Companies considered to be data controllers or processors now have until May 27, 2021 to comply. The law will be enforced by a new national authority, the Personal Data Protection Committee (PDPC), similar to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).
The PDPA applies to all data collection, usage, and disclosure — and for all individuals living in Thailand — regardless of the data processor’s headquarters.
Like the GDPR, the PDPA protects any personal data that can be used to identify someone. PII (personally identifiable information) includes: name, IP address, lat/long coordinates, cookie IDs, RFID numbers, user agents, mobile IDs, and biometric/genetic/financial/behavioral/demographic data.
Without consent from a Thai user, you cannot:
- Send full IP addresses downstream; they must be truncated
- Pass GPS data
- Store PII in internal logs
- Send any other PII via downstream OpenRTB fields, as you’d need consent for all DSPs, ad networks, data providers, etc. involved
If a user has offered explicit consent, however, you may continue to do cookie matching, interest targeting, frequency capping, programmatic ads, and so on.
PDPA vs. GDPR: Key similarities
The PDPA was inspired by the GDPR, so the laws share a number of commonalities and definitions, including:
PDPA vs. GDPR: Key differences
Despite their similarities, the PDPA does differ from the GDPR in a few areas:
PDPA compliance
Who needs to comply
Regardless of your company size, you’ll need to comply if your ad platform:
- Includes activity in Thailand
- Collects personal data of people in Thailand
- Offers or supplies goods or services in Thailand
- Monitors behavior of Thai users
Effectively, unless your site/app is unavailable in Thailand, you will need to take some steps to ensure PDPA-compliance.
How to comply
If you’re fully GDPR-compliant , you’re well on your way to PDPA compliance too.
Like the GDPR, the PDPA qualifies consent as a freely-given indication of a users’ agreement for data processing — and requires that information on personal data collection and use be clear, adequate, and easily accessible.
Consent must be provided by the data subject in writing or by other means, such as a consent banner on your website. The right to revoke consent must also be clearly disclosed.
As you prepare for the PDPA (by May 27, 2021), we suggest the following:
- Review the PII you collect from Thailand Conduct a detailed audit and risk assessment of your Thai user data, how it’s used, and with whom you share it. For programmatic advertising or data sales, this will include ad servers, DMPs, DSPs, etc.
- Avoid storing any PII in your logs for Thai users
- Ensure your CMP tool prompts consent for anyone in Thailand
- Enact a risk assessment plan Breach notifications for the PDPA are the same 72 hours mandated by the GDPR, so you’ll want to be prepared to act quickly.
What’s next?
With the passage of the PDPA, Thailand joins more than 100 countries with personal data protection laws.