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Is My Website GDPR Compliant?

By webtrade, Wednesday, 31st January 2018 | 0 comments
Filed under: Google Adwords, Web Development, SEO, Google Analytics, General News, In the Press.

Is My Website GDPR Compliant?

What does it mean? Why is it important? & How will it affect me?

GDPR is the EU General Data Protection Regulation which comes into effect from the 25th of May 2018. It means that if your business uses email marketing, sends direct mail or makes sales calls. The law is changing what you can & can’t do. This includes common tracking tools such as Google Analytics.

The new law states that (among other things) if someone has given consent for you to collect data (i.e. newsletter sign ups, contact forms, etc…) you need to record when they gave you permission and you need to keep a log of what they were shown, when they opted in.

Visit the official EU GDPR website for full details of this new law, http://www.eugdpr.org/eugdpr.org.html

What data are you collecting?
You may think that you aren’t collecting any data on your website, but if you are using a tracking tool such as Google Analytics then you’re wrong, as this law applies to data which could be traced back to an individual such as a computer IP address.

Note: If your website doesn’t have a privacy policy, it needs one to comply with the law, contact us, to help add this to your website.

Did you ask them to opt-in?
You need to explicitly gain permission to send someone email marketing. The user must opt in. So, Website contact forms, newsletter registration forms & checkout pages will need to have tick boxes for users to confirm they agree to opt in.

Note: Webtrade can help add tick boxes to your website forms and make sure you’re your users are complying, contact us, to help add this to your website.

Do you know when they opted-in?
You will need to record when they gave you permission and you need to log exactly what they were shown when opting in.

Can they opt-out?
People have the right to tell you to stop marketing to them and you must make this option clear in all of your communications.

Is your website secure?
In October of 2017, Google implemented warnings that label any sites without an SSL certificate as non secure. This means that even if you only have a basic contact form, users will still see a message warning that the site is not secure which can be a big problem to many.

Note: Webtrade can safely configure websites to include an SSL certificate giving it the security seal of approval.

Please go to our recent blog post on “Does My Website Need an SSL Certificate?

 

At Webtrade we excel at helping business owners with their website and the maintenance of their website, If you have any questions about how our websites are designed and how they can benefit you and your company and how Webtrade can make your website be the online tool you need it to be, please contact us, call us on 01 2990655 for a quote or email us at sales@webtrade.ie