WordPress GDPR Compliance Guide
WordPress provides a simple and affordable opportunity for putting together a corporate website. With the new EU GDPR regulations in place, however, many WordPress website owners wonder whether they’re meeting the compliance criteria.
The primary aim of the GDPR is to protect the privacy and personal information of people interacting with businesses. Whether you’re just creating a WordPress website or you’re thinking about modifying your existing online presence, there are several key steps to undertake to ensure GDPR compliance.
Learn about the Ways in Which Your Website is Collecting Data
GDPR regulates the manner in which websites collect data from their visitors. To ensure compliance, try to pinpoint all of the ways in which your audience could be sharing personal information with you. Some of the possibilities include:
- User registrations
- Writing comments
- Signing up for an email newsletter
- Sending an inquiry via a contact form
- Log in requirements for individual tools or plugins
- The collection of analytical data about the website audience
Once you have this information, you can move on to ensuring the GDPR compliance of WordPress website hosting.
Choose the Right Plugins
Luckily, WordPress and WordPress plugin developers have taken it to heart to help website owners ensure compliance with the new privacy regulations.
An array of plugins and other tools can be used for this purpose. This means you’ll be free from having to hire a web developer to modify the data collection aspects of the website. WordPress has created a page featuring all of the currently available GDPR-related plugins. It will be up to you to decide which ones you’ll have to install and run.
Update Your WordPress Version
Updating the WordPress version regularly is important from a security perspective, hence it plays a role in your GDPR compliance efforts.
WordPress 4.9.6 has a number of the GDPR characteristics already built into the platform. If you’re creating a WordPress website right now, you will have the latest version installed and there will be nothing to worry about.
The update takes place from your WordPress dashboard and only a few minutes are needed to get it done with.
Update Your Privacy Policy
Now that you have handled the software side of things, it’s time to work on the documents that highlight the data policies and security measures your website visitors are entitled to.
A good privacy policy should provide information about:
- Who you are and why you need to collect personal data (the only permissible option is for the provision of content and services on the website)
- What’s the legal basis for personal data collection
- How information is going to be shared with third parties (in the case, WordPress plugin developers), why and what your commitment to protecting the privacy of website visitors is
- The timeframe for the storage of collected data
- The rights of individuals to opt out from data collection efforts and the right to be forgotten
- A specific clause for filing a personal data-related complaint
Needless to say, there could be certain specific clauses pertaining to the type of website you’re running and the content featured on it. You cannot rely on a generic privacy agreement, which is why consulting an experienced attorney in the field and having the privacy policy drafted professionally is going to make the most sense as far as GDPR compliance efforts go.
