By How to Ensure Your Website is GDPR Compliant
When you own a company, you don’t have time to worry about little details. It would help if you were focused on the big picture—and that means making sure your website is GDPR compliant. Suppose you’re not familiar with what GDPR stands for. In that case, it’s simply the General Data Protection Regulation, which the European Union enacted in 2018 to protect customers’ privacy and security online. And suppose you have any relationship with European customers at all. In that case, your website must be compliant with these regulations.
What Is GDPR Compliance?
GDPR compliance is about protecting your customers’ data. But it’s also about protecting you and your business. The regulations are designed to prevent the unauthorized use of sensitive personal information, including things like Social Security numbers, names, addresses, email addresses, etc., that can be used to steal someone’s identity.
If a customer enters their information on your website, you need to have a reason for collecting it. You also need to store and safely handle that information. For example, you can’t keep it forever. You can’t sell it or give it away. And if you want to be compliant, you’d better be able to prove that your organization is responsible and trustworthy enough to keep sensitive data in your care.
How Can My Website Be GDPR Compliant?
You may take certain measures to ensure that your website is GDPR compliant. You may not be offering a physical product, but people still need to feel secure when doing business with you. They need to know that you will protect their data and hold it securely until they decide to opt-out of your marketing email list or delete their account.
Get a third-party audit to help you determine if your current website and marketing processes comply with GDPR.
Create A Privacy Policy
You need to inform your customers of your policies. So, you’ll need to write a Privacy Policy that outlines what data you collect and how you use it.
Include straightforward language and visuals to help consumers understand how you utilize their data. You don’t want anyone to feel like they can’t understand your policy or like it’s too complex for them. You want someone very new to computers to be able to pick up and read your privacy policy and have an understanding of what’s happening with their data.
Of course, you also want to be transparent about what you’re doing with people’s data. A comprehensive Privacy Policy will help you do that.
Provide Clear Information On Opt-Out and Delete
You need to give your customers the ability to opt out of your marketing mailings and delete their accounts if they no longer want to be a part of your organization.
The GDPR states that your customers have the right to be forgotten. That means they can contact you to request that your organization remove any personal information about them. You must honor those requests promptly and without question.
Be Clear About Data Breaches
If a breach occurs, you need to be transparent with the people harmed by it. Within 72 hours of learning of the breach, you must inform them in writing and provide a copy of your report to their data protection authority.
Under GDPR, you’re required to disclose a breach to anyone affected by it. So, you need to include that in your Privacy Policy and make sure the people affected know they should raise a GDPR compliant complaint against your organization.
You must also inform people in writing within 72 hours of learning of any data breach. You’ll need to provide a copy of your report to their data protection authority.
Add A Cookie Notice
Cookies are small bits of text information placed on your website visitor’s computer and allow your website to remember information about the person visiting it. Cookies allow you to track people, see where they go on the internet, and understand how many pages they’ve visited.
GDPR compliance requires that you add a cookie notice. The standard cookie notice states that:
“This website uses cookies to enhance your browsing experience. We do not share personal information with other organizations without your permission.”
You should have an easy way for people to opt-out of cookies. The cookie notice should explain that when people accept cookies, they’re allowing you to collect data about them and their frequency of browsing. It also informs customers that they can choose not to allow this by changing their browser settings.
Conclusion
It’s important to remember that GDPR compliance doesn’t just apply to customers in the European Union. Even if your organization isn’t based in the EU and doesn’t have any physical operations there, you still need to be compliant with GDPR.
You may not think these regulations will affect your business, but if you do business with European customers, even if people from anywhere else in the world link to your website from an EU page, then it’s important for you to be as compliant as possible.
Also Read: How Does Crypto Mining Work?
Latest News and updates, Follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.
Get the latest updates directly on your mobile, save and send a message at +91-9899909957 on Whatsapp to start.
