Privacy Policy, GDPR and other fun things
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and you should not use this post as legal advice! This is just my take on what needs to be done in order to be in compliance with the GDPR, and a little bit about Privacy Policy and why we need them.
If you have a blog, you have probably heard of the new regulations from the EU. And they sure do apply to all of us. What it means, is that each blog needs to have a Privacy Policy, and also a secure connection, including SSL.
My privacy policy is pretty straight forward, and I may need to add a few things to it, but I am in the clear. This new regulation goes into effect today, but never fear, there is no need to stress out too much just yet. If you are not compliant with the new GDPR, you will first get a notice, letting you know what you need to do in order to be compliant. And if you don’t after that, that’s when the trouble starts. The fine can be up to €20 million…
As you can see, in order to comment on my blog posts now, you have to click to agree to my site storing information about you – your e-mail address and your IP address are the most important – and these will not be shared with any third parties. I also have a cookie accept button that you need to accept if you want to proceed to different posts here. If you don’t want me to store a cookie with your information, the only thing you can do is to leave the site. My Cookie Policy is also pretty straight forward.
If you have questions, other people have answered them much better than me – you can check out The Blogger’s Guide to GDPR as they explain things very well.
Good luck with the compliance!!
Yeah, what annoys me is all the times I need to agree and click and re-click in order to stay subscribed to mailing lists and/or leave a comment, but it was expected. Oh well, as long as we stay around and they let us do our things, we’re all good 😉
Yeah, but I have also gotten rid of a lot of e-mails from authors who added my e-mail address to their mailing list either through a giveaway, or because they got my e-mail from someone else 🙂 So there is some good coming from this!
That is soooo true *Lol* Same here!
I’m pretty happy to get rid of all those e-mails 🙂 Because some of them didn’t even have an unsubscribe button :O
I hope my blog is compliant. I had my co-admin (Sky) take a look at things…add a privacy policy. She thinks I’m good but I’ll go read The Blogger’s Guide that you provided the link for. This kinda overwhelms me since I’m not all that tech savvy but I don’t have many “extras” on my blog that collect, track info, so…
Happy Friday, wifey!! It’s a tad bit sad here this morning…Jax left and I won’t see him again for 6 weeks. *sniff* {{{BIG HUGS}}} & lots of love!!!
I think if you mention what those extras on your blog are, you’re good, Brandee.
Six weeks is a long time! *sending big, big hugs*
Twitter: kimbacaffeinate
Blogger added a privacy policy that you cannot see if you aren’t in the UK. I think if you type in your blog address. uk you can see it or ask a UK blogger.
That’s weird! A friend of mine just asked me to check her blogger blog… and I could see the cookie acceptance thing, but she couldn’t see it herself. Not very helpful, really!
Same for me. And if you have a domain name instead of a blogspot address that won’t work.
It’s really frustrating trying to find out if you’re compliant and can’t even see it lol
Yeah, it’s not easy to make sure we have everything we need – and I think it’s especially hard for those of us who don’t make any money with our blogs!
I was going to ask you to check my blog, but I asked our connection in Germany. She saw the EU cookie message. I think I am good that way. Blogger made us all HTTPS last year (not sure about the custom URL people). Blogger also started removing third party widgets a long time ago.
The frustrating part about that format is the message they gave us is all jargon and our questions in the forum are not being answered by anyone let alone anyone official. Hoping I’m okay. I too am checking the link you supplied to find out about privacy policy.
Thank you for this post.
My privacy policy is ridiculously long lol. I figured better safe than sorry. I wasn’t sure what needed to be included, so I included everything I could think of. But if they’re sending out warnings before actually fining people, that makes everything a lot less worrisome. Hopefully we’ll all be in the clear though 🙂