GDPR

Have you received a gazillion emails this week titled ‘We don’t want to lose you?’

Yeah, me too.

To be honest, I’m enjoying the opportunity to repeatedly ignore some of the increasingly desperate pleas; the ones from companies I don’t think I’ve ever signed up to get mail from.

Anyway, GDPR – the General Data Protection Regulation – is the reason for it all, and those emails probably won’t stop until 25 May, which is when it all has to be in place or BAD THINGS may happen. I’ve read all sorts of posts on Facebook where other authors question what we’re meant to do and how far we need to take it.

Here is my contribution to the whole shebang.

I have a blog/website, a newsletter (in MailChimp) and an Etsy shop where you can buy signed books, and I collect data (generally email addresses) for people to sign up to or use these things. Therefore, I need to have a privacy notice. This explains what data I collect, why I collect it, and how I store it, including whether I share it with any third parties, who they are, and what their privacy policies are. My privacy notice is in my site menu, and also linked below.

Read my privacy notice

Luckily for me, all my blog followers and newsletter subscribers are organic. I’ve never bought a list, or participated in anything where you’re required to sign up to my newsletter for a free gift. Everyone has signed themselves up, and my subscriber form has always explained what the content will be, so the consent is informed. I don’t use the contact details for any additional purpose, like separate marketing emails. Therefore I won’t be sending a ‘please stay!’ email.

However, I have made a few changes. My newsletter form now has a bit of required legal language. My contact form has lost a few fields like name and website, which were nice to have but not necessary, and gained a note about what happens to the info you send me. I’ve also added a floating cookie banner thingy so that you know the site uses cookies, and can choose whether or not to enable them.

I’ll just remind you at this point that if you do wish to unfollow my blog or unsubscribe from my newsletter, you are very welcome to do so at any time, by clicking the Unfollow button on here or the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of my newsletter. I’ve also touched on your other rights, regarding information you share with me, in the privacy notice.

And there you have it. If you think I’ve missed anything off my privacy notice, do let me know – preferably before 25 May!

Normal service – or what passes for it on this blog – will now resume!

NB: I am not a lawyer. This blog post is my interpretation, and I do not claim that it is legally or factually accurate.

Especially given that I write fiction most of the time! 😉

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The featured image (isn’t it lovely?) is Big_Data_Higgs by KamiPhuc, and it is shared under Creative Commons license 2.0.