GDPR-Compliant Screen Recording: What You Actually Need to Know

You need to record your screen for a team update, a bug report, or an onboarding walkthrough. You open Loom, hit record, and share the link. Simple. But if you're in the EU, that recording just left European jurisdiction. The video file, the metadata, the viewer analytics — all sitting on US servers, processed by a US company, subject to US law. And if the recording captures a customer's name, an email thread, a Slack conversation, or a support ticket — you just exported personal data without thinking about it. Most teams don't think about this. They should. What GDPR actually requires for screen recordings Screen recordings aren't exempt from GDPR just because they're internal tools. Under the regulation, a screen recording is personal data processing if it captures any identifiable information — names, email addresses, profile pictures, IP addresses, customer data visible on screen, or even the voice of the person narrating. Three requirements matter most: 1. Lawful basis for process