First, GDPR stands for General Data Privacy Regulation and it's a sweeping change to privacy laws by the European Union. You might be seeing privacy updates from your favorite website, as they change their policies to abide by these new laws.

The laws were passed in 2016 but the EU gave companies two years to implement the changes to meet the new rules. The regulation goes into affect tomorrow.

The aim is to give customers control of their data as it's collected by the companies. Not only will it affect organizations located within the EU, but it will also apply to companies outside of the region if they offer goods or services to, or monitor the behavior of, people in the bloc.

GDPR could have a far-reaching impact on companies policies.

One major component of the GDPR is companies are forced to not use vague or confusing terms of consent. This will hopefully make consumers more informed and aware of the data companies are collecting on them. And firms won't be able to bundle consent for things into one package, they have to be separate.

Another rule is that companies have to notify regulators within 72 hours of a data breach (when they first find out about the breach). Hopefully this will stop companies from making leaks worse by giving hackers longer access by not brining in regulators.

When it comes to user data, users will have more control over their data. You will be able to access the personal data being stored by companies. You can then find out where and for what purpose it is being used.

More regulation allows for you to have the right to be forgotten. This means you can ask whoever has your data to erase it and then stop third parties processing it too. Further, the GDPR allows people to take their data and transfer it to a new service provider.

But the most exciting part of this, in my opinion, is that most international companies are simply applying the new standards across the board for all users. That is the easiest implementation. The upside is that non-EU citizens might benefit from the additional protections. But it's dependent upon each company. The above effect is described as "The Brussels effect."

Another potentially interesting thing that could happen is as users move their data to different service providers they could be paid for their data, rather than the companies extracting profit from the users data, it could go to the user.

But as the privacy regulations get implemented tomorrow we will see how things change. These are good times for privacy conscious people.