GDPR Enforcement in 2025: Heightened Scrutiny on DSARs, Right to Erasure, and Age Verification

Why This Matters Significantly for Organizations

The heightened regulatory focus translates directly into increased risk for organizations that fall short on these compliance fronts. The consequences of non-compliance are becoming more severe and frequent:

• Increased Fines and Enforcement Actions:
  • DSARs and Erasure: Delays in responding to DSARs, providing incomplete data, or failing to promptly and effectively delete personal data upon a valid request have consistently triggered significant administrative fines and other enforcement actions. Recent enforcement trends from leading regulators, such as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), and various German DPAs (e.g., Hamburg, Berlin), demonstrate a clear willingness to impose penalties for DSAR and erasure failings. These fines serve as powerful deterrents and underline the seriousness with which these rights are viewed.
  • Age Verification: Non-compliance with age verification requirements, especially when processing children’s data, is considered a serious violation. This often falls under the broader principles of ‘data protection by design and by default’ (Article 25 GDPR) and the special protection afforded to children’s data (Recital 38, Article 8 GDPR). Regulators are increasingly scrutinizing how companies determine and verify the age of users to ensure valid consent for data processing (where applicable) and to prevent children from accessing inappropriate content or services.
• Reputational Damage and Loss of Trust:
  • Beyond financial penalties, mishandling fundamental data subject rights or failing to protect children’s data can lead to severe reputational damage. Public outcry, negative media coverage, and a significant loss of consumer trust can have long-lasting adverse effects on brand value and customer loyalty.
• Complex Technical and Legal Thresholds:
  • Age Verification: Companies collecting children’s data online face a complex challenge in proving that their age verification methods meet national legal standards. These standards can vary (e.g., minimum age for online consent), and the technologies to implement them range from identity-based solutions (requiring official documents) to behavior-based inferences. Ensuring these methods are both effective and privacy-preserving is a delicate balance.
  • Right to Erasure: Implementing auto-erasure systems effectively requires a deep understanding of data lifecycles, interconnected systems, backups, and archival processes. It’s not simply about hitting a delete button; it involves ensuring data is purged across all relevant locations and that the deletion process is auditable.

Recommended Measures for Proactive Compliance

To mitigate risks and ensure robust compliance in these critical areas, organizations should proactively implement the following measures:

1. Assess and Streamline DSAR Workflows:
   • Process Mapping: Conduct a thorough review and mapping of your current DSAR handling process from request receipt to final response. Identify bottlenecks, manual touchpoints, and areas prone to error or delay.
   • Automation Tools: Invest in and deploy specialized DSAR management software or privacy compliance platforms. These tools can automate request intake, identity verification, data discovery, redaction, and response generation, significantly improving efficiency and accuracy.
   • Dedicated Teams/Resources: For larger organizations, establish or empower dedicated privacy or compliance teams with clear roles and responsibilities for DSAR management. Ensure they have the necessary training and resources.
   • Clear Policies: Develop and disseminate internal policies and procedures for DSAR handling, including timelines, communication templates, and escalation paths.
2. Implement Robust Erasure Systems and Protocols:
   • Automated Erasure Mechanisms: Where feasible, design and implement auto-erasure systems that align with the GDPR’s “right to be forgotten” principles. This involves configuring systems to automatically delete data when its retention period expires or when a valid erasure request is received.
   • Data Lifecycle Management: Integrate erasure processes into your broader data lifecycle management framework. Understand where all personal data resides (including backups, archives, and third-party processors) and ensure deletion requests propagate throughout your ecosystem.
   • Logging and Audit Trails: Maintain comprehensive logs and audit trails for all erasure activities. This documentation is crucial for demonstrating compliance to regulators, proving that data was indeed deleted in response to requests or retention policies.
   • Technical and Organizational Measures: Ensure that technical and organizational measures are in place to securely delete data and prevent accidental recovery.
3. Deploy Effective Age Verification Tools and Strategies:
   • Risk Assessment: Conduct a thorough assessment to determine if your service is likely to be accessed by children and if you process their personal data.
   • Age-Appropriate Design: Implement “data protection by design” principles, ensuring that services likely to be used by children have privacy settings by default set to the highest level, and that data collection is minimized.
   • Verification Technologies: Explore and deploy appropriate age verification tools, considering the context and risk. Options include:
     • Self-declaration with clear warnings: For low-risk services.
     • AI-based estimation: Analyzing facial features or voice patterns (with privacy safeguards).
     • Identity-based verification: Requiring official documents or third-party identity checks for high-risk services.
     • Knowledge-based authentication: Asking questions only an adult would know.
   • Legal Threshold Compliance: Crucially, ensure that your chosen age verification method meets the specific national legal thresholds for the age of consent for data processing (Article 8 GDPR) in the Member States where your users are located.
   • Privacy-Preserving Approaches: Prioritize age verification methods that minimize the collection of additional personal data and respect the principle of data minimization.
4. Comprehensive Staff Education and Training:
   • Cross-Functional Training: Provide regular, targeted training to all staff members who handle personal data or interact with data subjects. This includes teams in support, legal, marketing, IT, engineering, and product development.
   • Key Requirements and Timelines: Ensure staff understand the strict timelines for responding to DSARs and erasure requests, the specific requirements for valid requests, and the procedures for escalating complex cases.
   • Children’s Data Protection: Educate staff on the special considerations for processing children’s data, the importance of age verification, and the principles of age-appropriate design.
   • Roles and Responsibilities: Clearly define roles and responsibilities for data protection within the organization, empowering employees to act as effective guardians of personal data.

By proactively addressing these areas, organizations can not only ensure compliance with the evolving GDPR enforcement landscape but also strengthen their reputation as trustworthy and responsible data handlers in 2025 and beyond.

Official Sources and Further Reading:

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – Regulation (EU) 2016/679:
  • Article 15 (Right of access by the data subject)
  • Article 17 (Right to erasure ‘right to be forgotten’)
  • Article 8 (Conditions applicable to child’s consent in relation to information society services)
  • Article 25 (Data protection by design and by default)
  • Official GDPR Text – EUR-Lex
• European Data Protection Board (EDPB) – Guidelines:
  • The EDPB issues critical guidelines that provide detailed interpretations and best practices for GDPR compliance. Look for guidelines related to:
    • Right of Access
    • Right to Erasure
    • Age-Appropriate Design Code / Children’s Data Protection
  • EDPB Guidelines and Recommendations
  • Specifically, look for any EDPB guidelines on age verification or children’s data protection, as these are often updated to reflect new challenges.
• National Data Protection Authorities (e.g., ICO, DPC, CNIL, German DPAs):
  • These authorities frequently publish their own guidance, enforcement actions, and annual reports detailing their priorities and enforcement statistics. Reviewing their latest publications can provide insight into specific national focuses.
  • Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – UK
  • Data Protection Commission (DPC) – Ireland
  • Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) – France
  • List of EU/EEA Data Protection Authorities (via EDPB)