For any webmaster today, one of the most importantly discussed topics across the industry is data protection. Thanks to the scandals of recent years, people are more aware than ever about securing our data and keeping it safe. It’s part and parcel of modern website management. However, today, one new problem is on the horizon for you to overcome. This is known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It’s a new set of rulings brought in by the European Union, impacting on anyone working in or with anyone from the EU member nations.
However, as a webmaster, you might not fully appreciate the importance of GDPR in terms of your day-to-day work. This is why it is recommend that you take a moment to have a look at this article and determine what you need to do as a webmaster to better manage your business.
What matters, then? What do you need to do if you wish to take a closer look at the challenges that lie in wait for you?
Governance is important when it comes to being a webmaster. How can you keep in touch with GDPR and ensure your long-term success?
The expectation of the modern webmaster
So, first off, you have some very important rules that you need to stick to. First and foremost, you need to be totally clear about who you are and what you want. The days of being able to hide behind an overly verbose privacy policy are gone. So, too, are the days of being to just assume consent to use the data people give you.
Today, you must give a full and clear level of information to all users about who you are, and what you want with their data. Sadly, in some ways, the days of being able to just ask people for their data are gone. As a website owner/webmaster, you need to make it easier for people to put a face to the name.
You also need to tell them why you want the data you’re asking for, and for how long – as well as who you will share that data with.
Asking for consent
By the same token, today you will be fully expected to ask for consent when someone uses your website. In the past, merely ticking one (already ticked) box was enough to make sure that you had consent. Now, you need to make sure that you specifically ask for clear consent – for everything.
You need to have various tick boxes to help them tick and untick their preferences. Consent on one part of the process is no longer consent for everything. This is why recommend that every webmaster goes out of their way to learn more about this vital part of the process.
Quickly, you should feel much easier asking for consent as you are much clearer in what you are asking for, how long for and why. Basically, GDPR ends webmaster anonymity as well as makes you offer clarity on everything you want and need from a user
Access to data
Another important change with GDPR is that, now, people have full and express rights to see all the data that you have on them. In the past, you could easily ignore this kind of request. Now, though? You need to comply with any data requests. If someone wants to see the data that you have about them, then you must show them – in full – within a short space of time.
If not, they have the right to challenge your data usage and this could see you warned, censored or even fined by the EU. You should look then to make sure that your business is open and transparent about data storage, and that you never store any data that you have no right to hold: it’s much easier for people to discover excessive data collection.
The right to be removed
Crucially, webmasters also now need to give people the right to be forgotten in the first place. If you happen to spend a lot of time working with your customers, it’s only natural that you would want to build up trust. This means that your trust must extend to any requests to partially or fully remove their data when they ask.
A failure to comply with this will be a stain on your reputation, but it will also likely cause you more than a few issues as time goes on. So, don’t allow yourself to become a business that tries to keep data to make your customer list look bigger. If someone has made the request that you remove their data from your systems, then you would do well to comply with their question and get rid of that data as soon as you can.
The requirement to inform
Of course, one of the main reasons that privacy and the like is even a discussion is due to mass data breaches on some of our most trusted online institutions. This is why that any webmaster today who operates within GDPR jurisdiction will need to inform all users of any data breaches which happen to take place.
If you are the victim of a data breach, then you have to let all of your customers know within a 72-hour timeframe of the problem. A failure to do so can be quite damaging to your reputation, and will immediately hamper your trust rating with all of your users. So, you should look to make sure that you have a clear pathway for informing users of any potential data breaches which have taken place.
You would want to know if your personal data had been compromised, so give your customers the same courtesy.
What should you do?
Please be aware that the above information is merely for informational purposes. For any webmaster who still has issues with using GDPR, we recommend that you contact professional GDPR experts, for more information you can see casinopick.ie ‘s “55 Things You Should Know About GDPR” below.
The right assistance can make sure you never need to fall foul of compliance issues later.