- About GDPR and Personal Data
- Consequences of GDPR non-compliance
- How to Comply With GDPR?
- Top 10 WordPress GDPR Plugins
- Must-Have WordPress Plugins
It’s been almost two years since the “great and terrible” GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) regulation came into effect. Yet, many WordPress website owners still do not fulfill all its requirements the way they should.
In fact, complying with GDPR isn’t that tough, especially with a whole bunch of WordPress plugins by your side. Not only do they speed up the process but they also make you feel confident about covering the GDPR bases.
In this article, we discuss a group of ten great WordPress GDPR plugins collected for you so you can stop thinking about the regulation and consequences of non-compliance. And in case you are not very familiar with GDPR in general, we’ve included some additional information.
About GDPR and Personal Data
Personal data relates to any person’s information that helps identify them. In terms of GDPR norms, this includes data provided by a user for a particular web resource (name and surname, gender, email, or phone number), as well as data collected automatically. The last one includes data about the location, device (including the IP address), operating system, etc.
The other kind of personal data refers to information about viewed pages, search queries, social media posts, and data that determines user’s preferences and interests, as well as social status, religious beliefs, political views, etc. A separate group of data includes the user’s payment information.
Long story short, the GDPR regulation was made up specifically for personal data protection. It consists of 99 articles that govern the relationship between those who provide their personal data (EU citizens) and those who collect, process, and use this data (internet services, web resources, commercial and non-profit companies, organizations, etc.)
GDPR applies to the entire world, although it was specifically adopted in the EU. This is a law protecting the rights of any online user who either lives in EU territory or is an EU citizen.
Consequences of GDPR Incompliance
Personal data protection laws have existed before, but it was the GDPR that made so much noise for three reasons: 1) its global nature, 2) the necessity to notify about data leakage, and 3) big fines for violators.
The amount of the fine is determined on a case-by-case basis; yet, the regulations specify the maximal number of a fine for two types of violations:
- If there has been a violation of technical standards while working with data, the fine may amount to 10 million euros or 2% of the company turnover of the previous financial year.
- If the company infringed on user rights or transferred data to someone, it can get charged up to 20 million euros or 4% of the value of the previous financial year.
For minor violations, a warning is relied on first. Nevertheless, paying a fine does not exempt an entity from compliance with GDPR.
How to Comply With GDPR
Here are some tips on how to bring your website information systems in accordance with GDPR:
- Assess the consequences of protecting personal data before developing software or new functionality. This is a mandatory procedure allowing you to take into account all risks during development and integrate user information protection into the system core.
- Limit the list of personal data collected. Review the principle of “any user information will come in handy” and moderate your appetites.
- Limit the list of personal data that’s being collected. The principle of “any user information will come in handy” will not work from now on.
- Keep the data register. You need to keep a detailed account of all user personal information. You must know its location; take responsibility for the files or process, levels of data access, risks and significance of files, etc.
- Develop a new privacy policy. In simple words, describe everything related to users’ rights, the contractors involved, and the security measures taken to maintain confidentiality. In addition, you need to clearly distinguish between consent to the terms of use and consent to the collection of information for different purposes.
- Obtain consent to the data processing from old users. Send them an email explaining and asking to confirm the new regulation.
- Obtain consent to the use of cookies. Add a pop-up window explaining why you use cookies and place a link to the Privacy Policy and the OK button. The window should not disappear until the user clicks on the button.
- Let users know about the data they shared with you. You can place this info in the user account along with a request form for editing or deleting information.
- Use the software that meets privacy by design and privacy by default. The first means that one uses encryption and anonymization of users. The second implies installing the program where users should be offered the maximum security settings.
- Implement an information security system in the company. Store data on secure servers, delimit access levels, use DLP solutions, conduct seminars for employees, and take other measures to protect data.
- Do not contact unscrupulous contractors and make sure that partners who are involved in the processing of your users' data comply with the regulations.
- Fix all work with data. According to the GDPR, all the measures you take to protect data must be documented. Describe exactly what you are doing: from assessing the consequences of protection and maintaining the registry to technical solutions, provisions, and internal rules.
Top 10 WordPress GDPR Plugins
When it comes to GDPR, some of the existing plugins will sort of “have your back.” Using them is very convenient and easy: they help you create contact pages, pop-up banners, privacy policy lists, and many more.
This is a list of the top 10 useful WP GDPR plugins from the official WordPress.org website. This means all of them are free and 100% compatible. A bunch of other useful plugins for your WP website is waiting for your review down here.
Consider using this free GDPR plugin for easier DPR (Data Protection Officer) management. It helps you deal with consent management, pseudonymization of user website data, data breach notification logs, batch email notifications, etc. The plugin allows accessing data by the admin dashboard with email and has a telemetry tracker for plugin visualization. You will not find anything similar to this plugin for sure.
Cookies are always a great idea, isn’t it? No matter if your first thought was about a snack or website cookies, leave the last ones to the Cookie Notice. It’s a free WP plugin that lets you place a cookie bar to notify users about using them on your website. You will be surprised by the number of customization options. Furthermore, it allows users to opt-in (or out) of viewing your website. You can also include a redirection link on the notice to give users more information about your cookies and privacy policies.
3. WP GDPR Compliance Free WordPress Plugin
Install this plugin and your website users will be able to request their data, stored in your website’s database using a special Data Request page. After their request, users have temporary access to data and have the right to delete one, if desired.
The plugin helps site owners to automatically add a GDPR consent checkbox to those sections of your website managed by other plugins like Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7, WooCommerce, WordPress Comments, etc. Do not worry - all of these plugins are compatible with each other.
4. Complianz GDPR Privacy Suite for WordPress
Complianz GDPR privacy suite offers both a free and paid version. If you choose the first one, you will have features like the conditional cookie warning and customized cookie policy. Besides, it scans your site for cookies and social media services. Be ready. The plugin will block third-party cookies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter. A premium version includes features like optimizing cookie notification, Geo IP cooking warning, inventory for data breaches, multi-language support for the cookie warning, etc.
5. Delete Me
Sometimes, you’ll have to deal with users who want to delete data from your website forever. Your responsibility is to provide them this opportunity and ensure their data is 100% removed from the source. Delete Me is an irreplaceable tool for such matters. Users will be able to delete their profiles, comments, posts, etc. without any extra requests. Before removal, they will be asked to confirm their action - just in case they clicked the button accidentally.
6. Wider Gravity Forms Stop Entries
Wider Gravity Forms Stop Entries is the type of plugin that lets every form submission remain stored on a web server. You can access these form submissions by using the admin panel. This ability is useful when you encounter issues receiving submissions through email. This plugin enables you to easily stop potentially sensitive user data from being stored on your server. How do you stay GDPR compliant with this plugin? You stay compliant by enhancing the privacy of your visitors’ form submissions. You can choose individual gravity forms and then stop this data from being stored.
The WP Security Audit Log keeps track of external threats like hack attempts. Most importantly for you, the plugin helps you deal with data breaches and take security measures required by GDPR. You will know who was on the site at the time of a data breach (it displays IP addresses).
Other useful info you can get from this plugin is a type of a breach (malicious, careless, or accidental). The plugin can also provide data breach details to a regulator necessary for his own inquiry. You can even set up an email alert for any action; for instance, in case a plugin is deactivated.
The GDPR Cookie Consent is another plugin that monitors cookies usage in accordance with the GDPR law. Install the plugin and add a notification that the user's cookies are used by the website. The users can give their consent from this notification. In case one does not, the plugin will block unnecessary cookies of the website. Also, the plugin offers a shortcode, which will display what cookies your site utilizes so you can show visitors on your privacy policy page.
GDPR Cookie Consent also provides a few customization options to fit your site’s design. For instance, you can choose the cookie bar color, message, and change how the button appears to users. You can choose to turn on and off the cookie bar, show it as a banner, choose where to show the information, and whether to make it sticky on page load.
GDPR Framework by Data443 is a great tool for managing personal data on a website. This plugin can track, manage and withdraw consent, enable DSAR on one page, use a helpful installation wizard, and delete or anonymize personal data automatically. But most importantly, it helps you generate a GDPR compliant Privacy Policy template page into WordPress. You’ll have to fine-tune it a bit to make it fit your specific website, but most of the groundwork of the policy is readily available.
It provides GDPR compliance products such as ClassiDocs, Blockchain privacy, and enterprise cloud eDiscovery tools. This plugin is currently integrated with Contact Form 7 & Contact Form Flamingo, Gravity Forms, and WPML.
10. WP AutoTerms
You are not a lawyer, and neither are we. Legal forms can be difficult for newbies like us, so you definitely need guidance. WP AutoTerms seems to be a great help when it comes to legal forms and their requirements. The plugin includes GDPR as well as a disclaimer when using affiliate links. Basically, it helps you create a Cookies Policy, Terms of Use and Privacy Policy forms, in addition to assisting you with writing other legal documents.
WP AutoTerms offers both free and paid versions. The last one helps you automatically create a privacy policy complete with wording specific to the GDPR, provide a cookies notice, and other disclaimers.
Must-Have WordPress Plugins
Do you want your website to work better, faster, and more efficiently? Don’t you want your visitors to wait for your website loading for hours because there you’ve got a lot of high-quality images? Do you want to protect your data more effectively? Then check out our Must-Have WordPress Plugins pack! Here we gathered all the coolest WP plugins you may need for the great work of your website. This pack of plugins contains several plugins and we’ll help you to install them, so don’t worry. First of all, the bundle has an SEO optimization plugin. This plugin helps you to optimize your website and get better rankings by Google. The next plugin is a Google analytics plugin. It helps you to track how the visitors behave on your website and helps you to optimize it for a better user experience. Also, you get an advanced site editor which can give you an awesome opportunity to edit your posts and pages more efficiently, saving your precious time. Then, you get an image optimizer, the plugin you need to reduce the size of your images so that pages will load faster. Every Internet user gets irritated when pages load too long, so this plugin is more than needed. Don’t worry about the quality of the photos and pictures because it doesn’t get worse. Also, you get a sitemap plugin that will generate sitemap.xml and automatically update it after any changes are made, which is quite vital for search engines. For example, when you make a new post on your website blog, this post will appear on Google as quickly as you just made it. Then, you also get a login page URL change plugin. With this plugin, you’ll be able to secure your login page UPL from hackers’ attacks, so you don’t have to worry about your important content. Plus, you get an Admin panel customization plugin. This plugin will help you to easily customize your admin panel like the admin menu, admin bar, login page, etc. If this idea of a pack with all needed WordPress plugin seems quite attractive to you, don’t wait too long and purchase it. We’ll help you first of all with the installation of the plugins, questions, issues you have but only in the English language. However, your website language doesn’t matter to us. Also, note that this service is valid for only one website.
Finishing up...
Ignoring GDPR is like playing Russian roulette: you never know when it hits. Isn’t it more logical to ensure the safety of your own website than giving yourself a huge risk? WordPress GDPR plugins make a vital step ahead in this procedure.
Due to the dynamic nature of websites, no platform, plugin, or solution can ensure 100% GDPR compliance. The GDPR compliance process will depend on the type of website you have, the data you store, and how you process the data. Do not hesitate to consult with a lawyer about the risks. Following all of these recommendations will ensure your 100% compliance.
Stay safe!
Read Also
WooCommerce GDPR: How to Make a WordPress E-commerce Website GDPR Compliant
Why is GDPR Vital for Your WordPress Website? 7 Important Steps to Take Right Now
100 Best WordPress Plugins Used by the 15 Top WordPress Blogs
Ways to Create a WordPress eCommerce Site | Knowledge Base Guide
Business WordPress Themes FAQ
Non-compliance can lead your business to unwanted consequences, which includes great financial losses and reputational damage to your brand. It may cause a delay of your business activity or, at least, a change in the way it operates. Another kind of impact caused by GDPR is its spread far beyond European borders. It’s obligatory for businesses to comply with the regulation not only within the EU but also outside. This is especially vital for companies selling products and services to EU-based users and watching their online behavior.
Theoretically, no. You don’t have to change your data processing policy if you:
- Do NOT purchase email lists or do cold mailings
- Talk openly about personal data that you collect–in other words, use Privacy Policy pop-ups, as well as Use of Cookies, and Navigational - Information Statement
- Do NOT ask users for data, which has no relation to a product or service
- Ensure a proper level of data security, which is: 1) using encryption of sensitive data; 2) limiting access to the production base, if possible
- Provide customers with the opportunity to "unsubscribe" from mailings
In practice, though, MOST websites collect way too much extra information for their analytics and marketing purposes. This makes GDPR a must-have.
Yes, since WordPress 4.9.6, the core WP software is GDPR compliant. The WordPress team has added several GDPR enhancements to ensure that WordPress meets the requirements.
First of all, update your software to WP 4.9.6 or higher. In this and later versions, WordPress added a number of privacy features including Data Export and Erase and Policy Generator. Second, update your privacy policy to include disclosures for all of the cookies and data. Next, add a cookie notice. Another important step is to simplify the procedure of requesting/deleting info for users. This requires creating a contact form in order for users to easily get in touch. Finally, if you offer user accounts on your website, collect customer data, or maintain a newsletter, you must create notifications for policy updates and data breaches.
What is great, we’ve got a bunch of GDPR compliance WP plugins to help you complete these steps in one click.