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| (image courtesy of Pixabay) |
The clock is ticking. I have only 2 more days to figure
out how the European Union’s new GDPR policy will impact my little blog beginning
May 25, 2018. I vacillate between thinking, “Don’t get your pants in a bunch” and
“Get your head out of the sand!”
GDPR stands for “General Data Protection Regulation.” Its
purpose is to protect the personal data of citizens in EU countries, but the
regulation has a far reach. Regardless of where they are based, businesses and
blogs that attract EU users must comply or face heavy fines. Up to two-million
euro has been a number bounced around quite a bit causing one of my blogging
friends to block readers from EU member countries and another to shut down her
blog altogether.
Both of those responses seem drastic to me. I’m just a
little hobby blogger, not a business. However, I do not want to be the one to
test whether the EU will come after a small blog either. In a recent thread on
Facebook, one blogger said she thinks the EU will be watching big companies
that unscrupulously use visitor information and that the real threat - if any -
will be the unscrupulous EU citizen suing the heck out of us claiming we
violated his privacy by not being GDPR compliant.
My blog does not have international appeal, but I do
occasionally have readers from Spain and Luxembourg. Most of my foreign
visitors are from Canada, Australia, and the UK. How the recent “Brexit” affects
GDPR is unclear but the UK is committed to comply. So I am too.
What makes complying fairly easy for me is that
- I do not sell anything nor make money with this blog in any way
- I do not accept advertising
- I do not sponsor give-aways
- I do not ask readers to subscribe to a newsletter
- I do not ask readers to join a mailing list
- I do not collect or store reader information from comments
- I do not write about the living except for an occasional reference to my immediate family and cousins who are not named or personally identifiable
A few issues of concern are cookies, those bits of text
strings sent from a website and stored on the user’s computer. Most cookies are
good. They are harmless. They make traveling through the Internet easier.
However, cookies are now getting a second look as the culprits that help Big
Bad Businesses and Big Bad Blogs monitor visitors’ behavior in order to manipulate
them.
Just to be safe - or at least I hope so - I have removed
social media buttons, Pinterest and Twitter. I also removed “Follow by Email,”
a gadget provided by Feedburner and available through Blogger. Feedburner is
known to be non-compliant and has not been updated in years. Unfortunately I do
not know what removing the gadget will do to current subscribers.
There are some cookies that are out of my control. Because
my blog is hosted on Blogger which is owned by Google, information about your
use of this site will be shared with Google. I can’t stop that. Google uses
cookies to deliver its services, personalize ads, and to analyze traffic. Readers
who are now wondering what information Google collects and stores can read the
updated policy HERE.
The good news is that Google has taken care of the
cookies issue for bloggers. Visitors entering Jollett Etc. from outside the
United States will see this message:
I suppose clicking the “Got it” button implies acceptance of Google’s
policy. The other option to “Learn More” takes the reader to an
explanation of what Google does with its cookies.
As GDPR gets closer to becoming our new normal, I am
remembering the big Y2K scare. Remember that? It was the “Year 2000 Bug” or “Millennium
Bug” that everyone thought would wreak havoc on computers and computer networks
worldwide. It had to do with a problem in the coding of dates after December
31, 1999. Would computers be able to roll over to 2000? I distinctly recall
that on January 1, 2000, the world kept turning. We did not die. Very few
computer failures were reported.
I hope that come
Friday, GDPR will be much ado about nothing for most of us.
Wendy
© 2018, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
Well. I have done nothing. Didn't even know I probably need to until a couple of days ago. I have no idea even where to begin. I do get a lot of international visitors to one particular post that someone added to Pinterest and has been accessed by lots and lots of folks (how to make a portacath seatbelt pillow for cancer patients). And I get a few others and wish I got more "new cousins" to come and visit me. AAAAAAAA!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm late to the party too. I think I might put back a couple things. Dianne Nolin made some good points in a conversation on Facebook that made me realize that the social buttons (Pinterest and Twitter) don't involve me at all. Feedburner will not be returning.
DeleteI've also been trying to figure out what I need to do! I have been assuming Google Blogger would take care of us, but I do wonder about feedburner. I have those hundreds of outlook email subscribers that I'm still curious about. I sure hope, like you, that it's all just a big scare.
ReplyDeleteYes, Blogger has us covered with that cookies warning that foreign visitors will see (and have been seeing for some time apparently). But if you sell anything or have advertising or collect information from visitors, it's up to you to do SOMETHING to protect privacy. And yes, I learned yesterday I have almost 800 outlook email subscribers too. I had no clue about that. I have removed Feedburner, but I don't know if the REAL subscribers will get my blog through email anymore or not.
DeleteLove those expressions! Yes, this is all a bit over my head as far as time even to figure it all out, but I'm hoping like you say May 25th will arrive and all that needs to be adjusted with Google and such everything should work out well. Hopefully!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I really think most of what is being required of the big players has nothing to do with those of us who blog for fun.
DeleteI hadn't even heard of this so I'm hoping I won't be affected in any way? I don't think I've gotten any readers from many EU countries.
ReplyDeletebetty
If you sell stuff on your blog, have advertising, collect names and addresses for a newsletter or mailing list, yes you would need to do something. Otherwise, you are probably fine.
DeleteWendy, if someone gives you their email address and asks you to send them your posts by email, and that’s all you do, and you let them unsubscribe at any time, how can they sue you for damages? This is surely a response to powerful companies like Facebook, giving/selling others the right to harvest your personal information, without your knowledge and consent, so it can be used to track or manipulate you in ways you could never imagine. You can hardly be held to account for manipulating someone, if you don’t manipulate them. It’s hard to believe ‘we’ will suddenly go mad overnight and start prosecuting honest people who do no harm.
ReplyDeleteI agree. My concern about the follow-by-email was whether that was considered collecting and storing information. I have removed Feedburner from my page because it has a bad reputation due to being non-compliant and not updated. I never knew until yesterday that I could actually find who subscribes by email. It took awhile to figure it out, but eventually I did and was shocked to find I have over 800 subscribers. Probably the first 800 are all outlook email subscribers with nonsensical names most joining in bulk in a couple days' time. Spambots.
DeleteWendy, I left Feedburner as is. That's how most of my older family members subscribe. I have to trust it's the ordinary people, like us, the EU are trying to protect. I added a Privacy and Cookie policy to the end of my blog, to show willing and I'll look into adding to the blurb Feedburner sends to new subscribers when I get a chance (it's not as if people, not even the bots, are signing up in droves!).
ReplyDeleteI live under a rock and have been busy so had NO idea any of this was going on. I guess I'll have to live on the edge because I've made no changes and really have no idea where to start. I am curious, however, as to how to figure out who follows by e-mail - are there directions somewhere? And once you figure that out, can you take people off the list?
ReplyDelete