What is PII?

PII stands for Personally Identifiable Information, the information used to identify yourself. In today’s high-tech work, you give up your PII all the time by buying items online, filling out forms, and applying for credit cards. Ultimately, you want to keep your PII safe and only known to you. However, when operating online, you want to believe that all your information is private and will not be sold off to other buyers.

What Types of PII Are There?

There are direct identifiers and indirect identifiers, direct identifiers include your Driver’s License, Passport, or Social Security Number. Indirect identifiers include race, zip code, and gender.

Government protection of this data varies from country to country. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU is the only consortium of countries that are mandating companies to comply with the protection of PII. In May of 2023, the Irish Data Protection Commission issued the biggest fine to a tech company, META, in the history of GDPR for transferring user data from the EU to the US. The EU has the strictest laws in place when it comes to the protection of PII.

The U.S., on the other hand, only has laws in place to protect health and financial information, making it a ripe market for the transfer and selling of your PII. When you read the Terms and Conditions of any web-based platform in the US, you are giving up your PII to be sold to companies that think they can make money off of it.

Why Does This Matter?

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) has created a new law to disclose Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) on private entities. This new BOI report will need entity owners to disclose their name, date of birth, business address, business EIN, and ID/passport.

It might be scary for many people to give up their PII to the US government. However, FileForms uses data encryption during data transition, ensuring nothing happens in transit. We us a serverless architecture that keeps our AWS infrastructure protected. We also use a third-party monitoring system to ensure everything is protected. You can count on us to store and use your PII for what it is needed, the BOI report, and nothing else.

So instead of avoiding filing the BOI because you are unsure that your data will be protected, use a trusted source like FileForms to file and avoid penalties in the future. Get started today!