The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union (EU) law that took effect on May 25, 2018. The goal of GDPR is to give EU citizens control over their personal data and change the data privacy approach of organisations across the world.

Leaving comments

I don’t open comments on my book reviews any more, but I do invite (and appreciate) comments on other posts.

By default, WordPress used to store the commenters name, email and website as a cookie on the user’s browser. This made it easier for users to leave comments on their favourite blogs because those fields were pre-populated.

Due to GDPR’s consent requirement, WordPress has added the comment consent checkbox. The user can leave a comment without checking this box. All it would mean is that they would have to manually enter their name, email, and website every time they leave a comment.

Other applications (plug-ins)

A lot of the best WordPress plugins have already gone ahead and added GDPR enhancement features – this includes newsletter subscriptions (not currently something I’m using) and contact forms.

Controlling Cookies

Visitors may wish to restrict the use of cookies, or completely prevent them from being set. Most browsers provide for ways to control cookie behaviour such as the length of time they are stored – either through built-in functionality or by utilising third party plugins. If you disable cookies, please be aware that some of the features of our service may not function correctly.

To find out more on how to manage and delete cookies, visit aboutcookies.org.

Affiliate links

I currently include links to Booktopia (and previously Amazon) and received a small percentage of any sales of book purchased using those links.