From May 25, 2018, new European privacy rules will come into effect: the so-called General Data Protection Regulation (AVG) or General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in English.
The rules apply to all European organizations and companies active in the European Union. In short it is about:
- Explicit consent – organizations must be able to prove that explicit consent has been given from collected data
- Right to be forgotten – consumers must be able to have their data deleted
- Right to data portability – consumers must be able to take their data with them to another provider
See also 'the GDPR in a nutshell' of the Dutch Data Protection Authority.
Important for all sites and shops
Almost all WordPress and WooCommerce sites experience it. It is obvious for shops: you always need address details to process the order. That's fine, as long as you explicitly inform the customer that the data will be used to process the order. Automatically making them a member of the monthly newsletter is not allowed, so you would have to add a separate checkbox for this.
But we also often ask visitors on an 'online business card' to leave their details for a newsletter. Here too, the owner of the site must emphasize the rights of the consumer and what will happen with the data provided.
What makes it difficult for (WordPress) website and shop owners is that external services are often used. Think of MailChimp for the newsletter or Exact Online for accounting. Actively ask such software suppliers how they handle (customer) data or draw up a Processing Agreement together.
WordPress GDPR Compliance plugin
Because every external service (and plugin!) has to decide for itself what they can do to comply with the rules, it will take a while before this is the case everywhere. For example, it is not self-evident for American providers unless they are focused on the European market!
That is why Van Ons itself has the free one WordPress GDPR Compliance plugin created which makes it possible to add the necessary checkboxes to your site. From January 2018 we will support Contact Form 7, WooCommerce and the standard WordPress Comments. Support for other (mostly forms) plugins will follow soon. Keep the roadmap closely monitor.