What is GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information of individuals within the European Union (EU). … GDPR came into effect across the EU on May 25, 2018.

So as a result companies from Europe regardless of where they are doing business have been updating their Privacy Policies and Data Collection policies in order to meet these guidelines.  We have received lots of updates from Joomla and WordPress Extensions in the last few weeks clarifying their changes and compliancy which is a good thing because it means your website is now using software that complies with GDPR…

So how does this affect us here in the USA?

Well you may be in the USA but your website is accessible world wide. That means folks from the European Union can visit your website, send you inquiries or purchase products off your website. And the new GDPR guidelines states that if the person visiting your website is in the European Union when they are visiting your website then they are covered by this regulation for general inquiry and data collection.  There must be some form of solicitation by the company to European Citizens (in other words enticing EU visitors to provide their information for a specific marketing purpose).

The GDPR guideline also states that ANY collection of financial transaction information is covered and protected by the GDPR regulation so any company selling product worldwide is most likely affected by these new laws.

A good outcome identified to me by wife Vicki who just returned from Europe recently was the speed of websites loading  are actually improved by these new laws. When you visit a website and they are bombarding you with visitor tracking software the websites load much slower. Now with the GDPR guidelines websites have less visitor tracking software and thus load quicker!

So basically GDPR provides better privacy for website visitors and faster websites – that sounds like a pretty good deal to me!

US companies that will be most affected by these new regulations are U.S.-based hospitality, travel, software services and e-commerce companies will certainly have to take a closer look at their online marketing practices. However, any U.S. company that has identified a market in an EU country and has localized web content should consider reviewing their web operations and what they do with visitor data.

For any company that would like to review your current privacy statements and privacy guidelines be sure to contact me and we can review your specific setup to make sure you are compliant and in good shape with GDPR.