GDPR and Personal Website
-
I’m not technical at all and am rather confused by the new EU privacy regulations. There are plug-ins to help with GDPR, but I have a personal plan. Other than a newsletter sign-up through MailChimp, (I’m going to adjust that in a minute) I’m not collecting any user data on my site. However, is WordPress collecting data on people who visit my site? Am I responsible for that data? Thank you in advance for your help.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
The current support document on GDPR is here: https://en.support.wordpress.com/automattic-gdpr/ which says:
We are currently working to add features to enhance user choice and bring more transparency to our practices around the collection, storage, and use of your data. We expect that Automattic products and services will be in compliance with GDPR requirements by May 2018.
We’ll also provide additional tools and information so that users of our services can take the steps needed to comply with the law, if necessary. -
So no information about what data wordpress gathers on our site visitors or how to access, opt-out, modify or erase that yet?
-
I was also expecting more information following, but no, nothing.
i.e. for me the most important things:
– Cookies and cookie opt-in?
– social buttons?
– Akismeth?
– Jetpack?
– comments and storing personal data like email (if someone is following my blog via email)Are there somewhere more informations what they gonna do? Or if?
I am a bit surprised that there is not more to find…whole Europe is not a small market… -
-
I agree. I had hoped that WordPress would provide its users with forms to send out so that we could simply contact the users who have signed up to our blogs or websites using the Follow button and advise them of the change and policy and ask them to opt in. In the absence of such a document or process, WP users will be forced to seek alternative means, Mailchimp or similar, which they will need to set up themselves manually to ensure they are not breaching the new guidelines. Given these come in in 10 days, I would have thought WP would have been a bit more forthcoming with information to its users. Plus, as the others have said above, we are not sure exactly how WP uses the information. Telling us that WP will be compliant by May 18 isn’t particularly helpful as WE need to be compliant by then. If we don’t have full details until then from WP, how can we ensure we are compliant?
-
-
Hi there,
We’ll be publishing more information in this regard in the support doc already mentioned above, and also on our internal blog, https://en.blog.wordpress.com, so please follow that blog to get updates as they come out. Those should address most of the questions you’ve asked here.
-
We’ve now published more information here:
For complete information about our use of data, please refer to our privacy policy, recently updated to add more detail:
We cannot give specific legal advice about your particular site, as we are not your attorneys.
In general, though, if you handle the information you collect from your visitors responsibly and are not sharing or selling it to other companies without permission, then the GDPR is unlikely to cause a radical change in how you do things. WordPress.com is not a tool which gives you a lot of personally or legally sensitive details on your visitors.
For most bloggers and site owners using WordPress.com, comments and feedback are the main way they collect information from visitors. In addition to what is public, there are also a few extra details visible to you in your dashboard, such as the IP address of commenters. When the GDPR goes into effect, people will be able to request a copy of this “personal data” or ask to have it deleted. We are working on ways to help you comply with such requests, which may be in the form of point-and-click tools or written guides.
We will also be enhancing the functionality of our existing EU cookie banner, so that it works in conjunction with our WordAds advertising program to only provide EU visitors with clear choices about personalized ads.
If you want to write a Privacy Policy that discloses to your site’s visitors the information that’s collected when they follow or comment on your site, you can find a detailed description of what gets collected about them at https://jetpack.com/support/comments/#privacy
And we will have written guidance for people with more complicated sites on what they should think about when it comes to protecting privacy and the new law.
Both our privacy.blog and the GDPR support page will have updates by the end of the month and going forward.
If you have any follow-up questions, let us know.
-
-
federleicht – let me know if you have any specific questions. I know that translations can sometimes be iffy at best. We may have a staff member that speaks your native language. I can’t promise, but can check if you’d prefer.
-
Thanks for the offer, but it is more about reading all this stuff in English and get it the right way, that’s why I started using deepl. And I have to write it finally in German…
If I have specific questions I will get back to you.
- The topic ‘GDPR and Personal Website’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 