GDPR - the short version

If you haven’t been bombarded with emails about the GDPR recently – you’ve obviously been out of cellphone reception. If you haven’t had the time to read through some of those articles, here’s our quick overview of the GDPR, what it is, and how it relates to both New Zealand and 543 Design’s Weebly built sites.

What Is it?
The General Data Protection regulation is Europe’s answer to protecting their citizen’s data. Basically if you provide a service or product to anyone from Europe – you’re going to need to comply. It kicked in on 25 May 2018.

The key takeaways:

• It applies to any company that handles any data of persons in the EU – regardless of if that country is based in Europe or not.
• You’ll need consent to conduct electronic direct marketing – but as a New Zealand company you’ve needed that for a while now anyway.
• Get it right, because penalties can be up to 4% of a companies annual global turnover and €20 million.
• People in Europe have the ‘right to be forgotten’ – so if someone tells you not to keep their data – get rid of it.
• You’ll need a privacy policy on your website.
• Data includes any information that can identify an individual – which includes IP addresses and device IDs

So what do you have to do as an NZ business?
The first question to ask is whether you trade in Europe at all, or get European visitors to your site. If so, then it’ll be worth delving a bit deeper into the GDPR here:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection_en

In most cases, the Content Management System and plugins for your site will be managed by global companies who will likely have updated their systems to comply with the GDPR. Think about your website provider, any booking apps you run and your email software, then just double check to see if they have contacted you recently. They should have guidelines on what they have done and what you may need to do.

What about 543 Design Clients?
For 543 Design clients, our Content Management Provider is Weebly. They have been steadily implementing comprehensive GDPR updates over the last couple of weeks. All 543 and Weebly sites now automatically show EU visitors a cookie notification and disable cookie functionality until that notification is accepted. If you’d like this text customised, please contact us. You are also able to add an ‘opt in’ element to your contact forms.

If you regularly send out e-newsletters that make it to the EU, it may be worth sending an email update giving users the ability to opt out of future e-newsletters (and have their data removed).

In a nutshell.
This is a big move for Europe that the rest of the world is now scurrying to comply with, but as a small NZ business, running a 543 Design website, it’s likely there aren’t many steps you’ll need to take right now. If you do think your site has a large European viewership though, please contact us to see if there are any further steps you'll need to take.
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Disclaimer: this is just a brief and informal summary and definitely not legal advice!