What is GDPR?
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation, which ensures that people in the EU/EEA have control over their personal information, both online and offline. It applies to all businesses in the EU/EEA, as well as businesses outside of the EU/EEA that process personal information from people in the EU/EEA. Personal data is defined as any data that identifies an individual directly or indirectly, such as a name, IP address or cookie identifier.
Website GDPR compliance
In order to comply with GDPR, you need to follow several requirements to legally process personal information. Your website needs a privacy policy, cookie policy, consent banner, data processing agreements (DPAs), and data subject access request (DSAR) forms. They require that your data collection process is transparent, that you state the legal basis and purposes of processing personal information, and use the appropriate technical and organizational measures to store this data.
consent manager
We recommend using Consent Manager to easily ensure your website is GDPR compliant. Their platform’s main focus is ensuring GDPR compliance – they automatically collect user consent, and evaluate your website by integrating A/B testing and design optimizers. In order to obtain user consent on your website, you should be using a consent management provider. Consent Manager has an integrated cookie crawler that automatically blocks cookies and ensures legal certainty for you and your website users. Their plans start from $0 a month, so you can become GDPR compliant for free!
how to become website gdpr compliant
- Conduct a GDPR assessment to assess how compliant your website currently is, and to find the areas in need of improvement.
- Secure your website – protect the data stored on your website from cyberattacks by installing firewalls, anti-virus software and specific employee passwords.
- Only store the necessary personal data, and delete data as soon as you no longer need them.
- Don’t share personal data with third-party services that aren’t GDPR compliant. Make sure all plugins you use are GDPR compliant before adding them to your website.
- Provide a private policy that is easily accessible, that informs your audience about their rights, and about how you collect, use and store their data.
- Add a consent banner for non-necessary cookies to get cookie consent from users – include an opt-out option, explain why you need cookies and how users can manage their preferences. The opt-in and opt-out options should be clear and easily noticeable on your website.
- Be transparent about your data processing practices, and get consent to collect data when relevant.
- Ensure you follow the website form guidelines. These guidelines include instructions such as not including pre-ticked boxes, having separate consent boxes for different types of processing, and gaining consent for third-party data sharing.
- Include the contact information of your data officer so users can contact them to enact their rights.
- Confirm and document your GDPR compliance by using a compliance automation tool to scan your website and document your compliance regularly.
