The GDPR is going into effect on May 25th and it’s a pretty big deal (learn more about it here), and it’s something we’re taking seriously here at Wildfire Concepts.

If you’re a member of Covert Commissions, you’ll know we’re in the business of making things as simple for you as possible, and we’ve completely taken care of GDPR compliance on all of our done for you affiliate system pages.

I’ll explain each of the important parts we’ve added to your hosted lead capture below, but first up let me just state the obvious… The contents of this page are informational, and do not contain any legal advice. To understand the implications of the GDPR on your organization, we recommend you seek legal counsel from a professional. (thanks!)

What Do You Need To Know To Be GDPR Compliant?

There are three things you can do when it comes to GDPR compliance.  (and yep, only three)

  1. Block all traffic from the EU on your website.  With 27 countries covered by the European Union that’s a lot of people!
  2. Get compliant (i’ll explain more about that below)
  3. Risk business and life destroying fines of millions of dollars.

There are some important changes you NEED to have on your website especially in regards to lead capture.   We’ll cover them one by one below to show you what we’ve done in each of the areas.

1 – Cookie Consent

You need to inform people who visit your website that your website uses cookies (if it does) and then link to your cookie policy.  Yes, you need a cookie policy.  (secretly I just like the cookie dough … cooking them is overrated…)

We’ve now added this to the bottom of every of our Covert Commissions affiliate system pages.

2 – Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy Documents

You need to have a clear Terms & Conditions document that has a checkbox allowing users to confirm their acceptance of those T’s & C’s – and the same for your Privacy Policy Documents.

We’ve done that for you by hosting it on our specially prepared documents on our site, so there’s nothing for you to have to worry about.   You’ll see these links at the bottom of every Covert Commissions pages we’ve given you.

3 – Clear Disclosure & The Right to be Forgotten

You need to have a checkbox that displays for anyone in the EU – they need to check the box before they’ll be able to subscribe.  The box CAN’T be pre-checked and the text needs to clearly explain what they’ll be getting and who from.

You also need to have a system in place to be able to remove the person and all their data if requested.  And.. they mean everything… all of your cookie data, your facebook retargeting pixels and of course your subscriber data.

The Covert Commissions pages now all display a check box and compliant text to all EU visitors, so … again – you’re all sorted if you are using our pages 🙂  Have a look below to see what I mean.

5 – Data Access

Along with the right to be forgotten, people can request an export of the information you have on them.  We’ve got support desk links at the bottom of all of your Covert Commissions pages, so they can request and get data if they need to from us.

6 – Data Breach & Rectification

You need to have something in place to connect with your subscribers in the event of a data breach, i.e. anything goes haywire and someone hacks your data you need to contact them, explain the situation and what steps you’ve taken to remedy it – and allow them update their data when safely protected.  By law you have 72 hours to notify your subscribers if there has been a data breach.

When it comes to that in regards to your subscribers inside of Covert Commissions, we collect their name and email (no passwords), and have a commitment to keeping that secure by using aweber as our central data management tool.

When it comes to YOUR data, we’re here to support you build your business – it’s in all of our benefit for you to succeed here and part of that comes with me being openness with you and working with you.  So if anything goes wrong anywhere – i’ll keep you updated.  Or if you’re concerned about anything just contact us 🙂

Anything You Find

As you can imagine, this has been a huge undertaking with over 60 lead capture pages and managing close to 40,000 subscribers (as of May 2018) for our members – so … there might be a few bits we’ve missed.  We’ve tried our best to get ALL of the pages, but … if we’ve missed something please (kindly) less us know so we can get it fixed up.

I appreciate you joining with me in whatever capacity, whether it’s blog visitor, customer or committed member – you’re awesome!  Thank you for being a part of this whole Internet marketing adventure with me!

What If You Have Your Own Blog? 

Do you need to do all of this work too?

Short answer is… YES.

Unfortunately this is not optional, if you have a website and are accepting visitors from Europe you need to be compliant.  A tool that’s just been released can help you get compliant faster called WP GDPR Fix.

I recommend you check it out if you have a blog, it will save you hours and hours of time and a lot of stress (and it just launched so it’s at a really low price).  Click here if you want to check it out.

And if you have any questions or comments about GDPR or what we’re doing with Covert Commissions in regards to GDPR please post them below 🙂

PLEASE NOTE: If you have tech support issues for any of our products, we can’t answer those here.  Please submit a support ticket at the Wildfire Concepts Support Desk