In reply to Mike Schinkel.

LOL how did israel got to be mentioned in this context?

But cross border internet law is a tricky thing, and I am not sure about european law but I do know how israeli law is being applied. In essence if you are targeting israely audience (lets say by having a web site in hebrew) you might get sued in israel for whatever your site does which is against the israeli law, and it does not make much difference where is the site hosted or who is the company behind it. The cases I can immediately remember are about gambling sites, and slander.

Obviously israel is a small country and if you are not a citizen there is not much the israeli law can do to you, but the EU is somewhat bigger than the US and breaking its laws might have ramifications for US companies even if they just provide a german/french/italian localization of their sites.

As microsoft, google and facebook discovered by now, if you want to operate in the EU you need to pay attention to what the regulators tell you.

So for sure if you have a site for some local shop in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota, you probably don't need to care about the GDPR, but once you start selling stuff to europeans, you are stepping into a gray area.