Website compliance and GDPR have long been popular, but what is GDPR, and how does it influence your online store? This article defines GDPR and provides website compliance recommendations for your organisation.
What is GDPR?
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A European rule protected personal data and required corporations to assess their activities. Brexit in 2020 freed the UK from EU rules, including General Data Protection Regulation. The UK revised the Data Protection Act 2018 and introduced the UK GDPR to protect British data. It includes comparable rules but allows the UK to make new legislation without EU consultation. Non-UK enterprises do not face these restrictions unless they have UK consumers. If so, the should follow the UK GDPR.
Your Business Duties
GDPR empowers consumers and prioritises data erasure and mobility. Customers must access, update, and delete data. GDPR protects all user data and privacy. Companies must know what customer data they acquire, how they use it, and where they store it.
Businesses must respect the General Data Protection Regulation and the seven data usage principles:
- Lawfulness, fairness, and transparency
- Purpose limitation
- Data minimisation
- Accuracy
- Storage limitation
- Integrity and confidentiality (security)
- Businesses must prove compliance if needed
GDPR Website Compliance Checklist
- Data protection officers supervise the organisation’s data protection operations and ensure GDPR compliance.
- A regular compliance monitor reduces team stress and legal risk.
- A clear, marked, and managed data security policy helps businesses organise and comply. It ensures that all employees know the company’s data protection policy and avoids errors caused by ignorant employees.
- All employees should know company data protection policies. They must understand what personal data you’re collecting and how to store it.
- Explain why the information is needed, who has access to it, and how you will ensure users can opt out or delete it.
Cookies
Cookies allow websites to track visitors and improve their online business strategy. A cookie policy on your website is the easiest method to comply with GDPR. Cookie-using websites must display pop-up boxes with opt-in/opt-out options. Any website without this pop-up box violates GDPR.
When a visitor submits a form or subscribes to marketing emails, you must verify their consent and explain how their data will be used. All companies must let customers unsubscribe from marketing emails. SSL certificates protect consumer data and help meet GDPR requirements by encrypting it between the website and the customer’s device.
Data Anonymisation
Marketing data (e.g., Google Analytics) must be anonymised to prevent personal identification. Before using this data, remove names, email addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, and financial information. To mitigate a data breach, create an action plan that specifies who is responsible and how an investigation will determine what happened and who was affected. You must notify authorities and affected parties of a breach.
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