Unless you’ve been spending your last half a year on a remote isle without any Internet connection, you are probably already a bit anxious about the new GDPR policy (General Data Protection Regulation) which will significantly influence your business, after May 25th 2018.
Generaly speaking GDPR is a privacy law, which regulates the use of the collected personal data, and applies to all the organisations who have EU citizens’ names in their data base. The EU citizens will now have the right to know when their personal data is being collected, what type of data is being collected, they will have access to that data, and be able to purge it on request.
While we ourselves are working on small changes to adjust to the new GDPR policy, we decided to share with you some points to keep in mind, when complying your Squarespace Site to the new law.
*Please beware that those are only some steps that should mean your site is compliant, and if you are not sure if it applies in your case, we recommend that you speak with a lawyer dealing with GDPR.
The Right to Access states that a user must be informed if data is being collected, what data is being collected, how, where, and for what purpose. To keep things simple and easy in your website, use your privacy policy to fully disclose your data collection and storage practices.
To comply with GDPR you must be able to provide and remove all personal data you have on your clients on request. Therefore, we advise you on organising and structuring all the data, which will substantially make your life easier afterwards.
You must offer a way for users to request information about themselves. We recommend using a simple form for this. A simple consent withdrawal/request to view form on your privacy policy page would be ideal (which is linked to any form which collects personal data).
You must explicitly state that you are collecting a user's information, before the user submits any information on your site. They should also be made aware that you will intend to store this data. You must also let them know how it is to be stored and used. Thankfully it’s not that difficult to implement. And remember, no more preset checkboxes.
If you have followed the above steps, that should be pretty much enough to make your Squarespace web-site “legal” again. However, if you are still not sure about any integrations you have, like Honeybook, 17Hats, Mailchimp, do yourself a favour and check for any updates from your providers.
That’s it, folks, we hope that now this law makes more sense to you. As from our side, we have already updated our privacy policy, where you can read what kind of information we collect and how we use it. We will also send you updates regarding our internal changes via email. If you are not in our mailing list yet, and would like to receive tips on using Squarespace, information about our sales, inspiration and other useful information by email, click here and sign up for our newsletter.
