How to Make My Website GDPR Compliant?

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No one has the right to use your personal information without your consent, and to establish this right of yours, GDPR comes into action. GDPR is a law that concerns users’ data privacy and security in the digital world.

No matter where you put your data online, the information needs to be confidential and can only be accessed by those you give permission to do so. Owning a website that does not ensure GDPR can be a severe offense.

What is GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a law passed by the EU in 2016. This law protects individuals’ personal information and provides control over data sharing. The law imposes the obligation to companies or organizations that collect user data.

Thanks to this law, organizations can get penalties up to millions of euros if they violate their user data privacy or security. Moreover, this is a very strict law to ensure protection of data to the EU and EEA internet users.

How to Make Website GDPR Compliant?

While a company or organization develops a website and creates a database to collect data, they must ensure the system is a GDPR compliant. Violating the law can literally ruin their business once and for all.

Here are 7 initiatives that must be ensured for a GDPR compliance website development. You cannot develop a website and collect data without the following assurances.

1. Update Privacy Policy

You must ensure that your data collection is transparent. How your website collects data, which plugins are collecting data, data collection from cookies, or any other data collection process should be accurately mentioned in the privacy policy.

The privacy policy is an agreement so make sure there is no fake information. The terms conditions should be mentioned precisely in the policy.

2. Get Consent for Cookies

As we all know, cookies collect data for some special use, like tracking user activity. When cookies collect data for your website, your users must know about it. You have to notify your users to let them know their data and what type of data is being collected by the cookies. Otherwise, you can violate the GDPR compliance law.

3. Use GDPR Compliant Plugins

Using plugins in your website that collects user data without letting them know about it – is considered disobeying the law. It is the duty of website administrators and developers that the plugins used in the website are valid, have GDPR compliance, and are safe to use. Moreover, you or your organization is to blame for any breach in data through any plugin.

4. Use Forms for Data Collection

Forms are the best way of letting your users voluntarily provide their data to you. As the users voluntarily give their personal data, you do not have to worry much about using their data for further use. However, that does not mean you must not take their consent.

GDPR requires you to take consent, whether it is voluntary or involuntary. You must always be transparent with your data collection. Your users must be aware of where and how their data is being used.

5. Notify Policy Update or Data Breach

If you change any policy of your website, then you must notify your users. They agreed once does not mean you do not need consent for further changes. Even a slight change in the policy should be mentioned to the users. You can either send out emails to all the users or take other initiatives to notify them.

Additionally, you must notify your users in case of any data breach. You can advise them to complete certain tasks to secure their information or take the necessary steps to secure data yourself.

6. Use Secure Protocols

You must ensure that your website is safe and secure for users to put in their personal information. If your system is not secured, you are putting your users’ information at risk as well as yours. Ensure the transaction is secure by using HTTPS protocols.

Apart from ensuring the website is secure, there is a low risk of a breach if you use HTTPS. Using a security protocol lets your users complete transactions in an encrypted way assuring their information is safe.

7. Opt-in and Opt-out Option

Your visitors agree to your policies now that does not mean they cannot disagree later. You must implement the opt-out option-in your website. Once your visitors trust you with their personal information, they should get the option for opting out as well.

If a user ever feels they do not want to be attached to your system or want their data removed, you must provide that facility to them. Otherwise, you can violate the GDPR law for using the data the users are not willingly providing anymore.

Conclusion

If you do not want to risk your business or organization facing legal issues, then you must ensure your website is GDPR compliant. It might seem overwhelming if you think about it as a strict law that you must follow. However, ensuring these features in a website is provides security and beneficial for both the owner and the users of a website.