[intro] When you have completed this guide you will be aware of any changes you need to implement on your EKM online shop in order to comply with the GDPR legislation due to be enforced on the 25th May 2018. [/intro]

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What is GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been introduced to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe. It aims to protect all EU citizens from privacy and data breaches and give citizens greater control of their data. It came into effect on 25 May 2018 and is enforced by the Information Commissioner's Office.

The GDPR applies to any organisation processing the personal data of EU citizens. This can be a name, email address, address, phone number, social media account or even an IP address. It also applies to all industries and sectors.

The GDPR makes reference to ‘controllers’ and ‘processors’. A controller determines the means and purposes of processing personal data. A processor processes personal data for a controller.

GDPR applies to ‘personal data’ which is any information that can be used to identify an individual, such as their name, telephone number, email address, IP address and so on.

The GDPR features an expansion of individual rights including:

  1. Right to be forgotten: An individual can request that an organisation remove all personal data they hold without delay;
  2. Right to object: An individual can prohibit personal data from being processed in certain ways;
  3. Right to rectification: An individual can request incorrect personal data to be corrected;
  4. Right of access: An individual has the right to know what personal data an organisation has about them and how it is processed;
  5. Right of portability: An individual can request that personal data be transported from one organisation to another;
  6. Right to fair and transparent processing: An individual has the right to information about the processing of their personal data.

The GDPR outlines stricter consent requirements and organisations must ensure that consent is obtained for every usage of personal data. Consent must be specific to a distinct purpose, pre-ticked checkboxes and silent consent will no longer constitute consent and you must be clear about the processing activities consent is given for.

GDPR Checklist

In order to perform due diligence on your own EKM online shop to ensure that you comply with the GDPR legislation, you need to work through the checklist below.

Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy

Note: While we have drafted up a Privacy Policy template for guidance, any personal information contained within our customer's EKM online shops is their own responsibility. We have taken security measures to ensure that our customers are protected against loss, alteration or misuse but GDPR compliance is the sole responsibility of the website/business owner.

As part of the GDPR legislation, you need to ensure that the Terms & Conditions and the Privacy Policy on your EKM online shop are clear, concise and can be easily located. If you are using the default text on the Terms and Privacy webpages, this has already been completed for you and a link to those webpages will be visible in the footer of your EKM online shop.

Processing Customer Data

However, if you have amended the copy or are using all of your own text on either the Terms or the Privacy webpages, you need to ensure that how you process a customer’s data on your EKM online shop is clearly defined, and you need to explain how and why you are collecting data. Your Privacy Policy will also need to detail third-party applications - such as Google Tag Manager for example - that you may be using to track user data on your EKM online shop.

Online Payments

As your EKM online shop is an e-commerce business, customers are able to process transactions using the Payment Methods which you will have set up already. Some of the Payment Methods on the EKM platform are offline (such as Cheque, Bank Transfer, Fax and Telephone) whilst others are processed via third-party sites such as Klarna and Paypal. In both scenarios, your EKM online shop will collect data on each customer and as a result, you need to ensure that this data is removed after a reasonable period.

The actual GDPR legislation does not specifically detail a recommended period for this but as an EKM online shop owner, we recommend that you keep records for a period of seven years in accordance with the HMRC.

Offline Security

GDPR legislation advises that as Data Processors, EKM online shop owners have appropriate procedures in place for the storing of sensitive data offline. Customer details, website logins, staff details and similar must be stored securely offline with access granted only where needed.

EKM Customers are responsible for ensuring that only authorised personnel access their accounts. If for any reason you are concerned about this, please contact us at abuse@ekm.com.

Consent

The GDPR legislation requires that your customers have to give their explicit consent for you to process their data. This requires an ‘opt-in’ - the customer actually has to tick a box or similar in order to give their consent, and pre-filled forms and checkboxes are no longer allowed.

When asking your customers for consent, you have to explain exactly why you need it and what you need it for. You also cannot use one checkbox to ask for consent for lots of different things - each aspect of consent you are offering must be explained and offered individually as ‘blanket’ consent is not enough.

You have to keep evidence of your consent - what was explained to the customer when they gave consent, how they gave consent, who gave the consent and why you needed that consent. You also need to review consent on a regular basis.

If the consent that you have asked your customer to provide is on behalf of a third party - for instance, Google Analytics - you will need to detail this so that your customer is aware of what entities will be using their personal data.

Active Opting In

Customer Accounts

EKM online shop

If the functionality is turned on, customers are able to create accounts on your EKM online shop to view their previous orders and if applicable, take advantage of offers and promotions. Customers can sign up for an account on checkout flow when they make a purchase, or alternatively, you can manually create an account for them. If the customer has created their own account, they have already provided their consent for their personal data to be used.

However, if you have manually created an account for your customers using their personal data, it is your responsibility as an EKM online shop owner to keep a record of how and when the consent was obtained, and what was explained to the customer prior to the account being created for them.

Contact Forms

EKM online shop

If you are using the standard Contact Forms on your EKM online shop, you do not need to worry as the fields on these forms are empty by default and contain no pre-filled fields or pre-ticked boxes. You must only use the forms for their intended purpose and not as a way to gain email addresses to use for future email marketing campaigns or similar. 

EKM Email Marketing

Contacts are added to EKM Email Marketing in one of three ways:

  1. Sign up through a signup form: Contacts signing up in this method receive a confirmation email asking them to confirm they wish to receive campaigns;
  2. Sign up via the checkout of your EKM shop: Contacts signing up using this method actively check a checkbox during checkout;
  3. Manually added by the account holder: As the account holder, you are stating that you have permission to send the contacts you are adding to your campaigns. This is stated on all input screens that are affected.

[caution]Up until the 22nd May 2018 when GDPR comes into effect for EKM Email Marketing, we will allow you to continue to send campaigns to contacts we do not have stored consent for. After that date, the system will only allow you to send to contacts we have stored consent for. [/caution]

Third Party

If you are using third party email marketing or contact forms on your EKM online shop, you need to ensure that by default, any checkboxes or fields must not be completed or ticked. This is so customers don’t submit the form without realising that they have approved something that they did not actively request; GDPR legislation requires that the visitor actively completes a field or ticks a box in order to sign up for something.

Unbundled Opting In/Granular Opting In

Unbundled Opting In means that when gaining consent and asking customers to opt-in several different aspects are not bundled under a single checkbox that needs to be clicked - visitors to your EKM online shop need to be able to pick and choose consent for different aspects (dependent on your content and products of course).

Granular Opting In means that you need to give your visitor more than one option to opt-in for something. When you obtain consent here, you need to ensure that you offer more than one choice for them to contact you, such as by phone, by text or by email, and give them a checkbox or similar for each option. Granular opting in ensures that the customers are explicitly aware of what level of contact with you they’re agreeing to when giving their consent.

EKM Email Marketing

Customers can sign up for your email newsletters by signing up via the checkout flow on your EKM online shop, using the sign-up form on your EKM online shop and can also be added manually by yourself. The EKM Email Marketing sign up flow prevents customers from signing up for anything other than your email newsletter.

EKM online shop

An EKM online shop using the default contact form and displaying a telephone number and postal address provides more than one option for customers to contact you should they wish to opt into something on your EKM online shop, such as having an account manually created for them. Using the default text on the Terms and Privacy pages also satisfies this part of the GDPR legislation too.

Third Party

If you are using third party contact forms or email marketing, you need to ensure that these aspects offer both unbundled and granular opting in.

Opting Out

EKM Email Marketing

Your customers can easily opt out of your email newsletters by using the unsubscribe link at the foot of each email, or by contacting your as the shop owner via the contact details displayed on your EKM online shop.

EKM online shop

Customers should be able to contact you easily via telephone, email and postal mail details displayed on your EKM online shop in order to opt out of something, such as a customer account.

Third Party

After you have ensured that opting in for consent is clearly explained and defined, you then need to ensure that opting out of consent is as easy as opting in. You need to offer options for each individual aspect that a customer could potentially opt-out from, and also ideally offer them the ability to change the frequency of communication with you if possible.

Storing of consent

Email Marketing

EKM Email Marketing

We have updated our system to enable the storing of consent information for each contact. Contacts we don’t have stored consent for will be visible via the Non-Consented Contact Group option in the left-hand navigation menu of EKM Email Marketing.

Third Party

However, if you are not using EKM Email Marketing and are using a third-party email marketing provider instead, it is your responsibility to ensure that your account with them adheres to GDPR legislation and recommended practices.

Cookies

EKM online shop

Your EKM online shop uses cookies in order to function, and your customers need to be aware of this. This can be done by implementing a banner or a pop-up modal advising the customers that cookies are used on your EKM online shop for analytical purposes with an accompanying statement in an easily accessed area which explains this in greater depth.

The banner or a pop-up modal is not essential, but you must include the use of cookies in your Privacy Policy. If you are using the default Privacy Webpage on your EKM online shop, we have already included this for you as standard.

Your EKM online shop will deliver the following cookies to the browsers of your customers:

Name
Purpose
Content
Expires
ekm_USERNAME
Temporary cookies generated to test if cookies are enabled on the visitor's browser.
TestCookies=ACTIVE&RS=FALSE&
logged_in=USERNAME&ServerID=***

72 hrs


(3 days)


ekm_pp_USERNAME
Stores a unique reference to visitors cart contents. Stores authentication details for customer logged in section.
Unique ID
On Exit
ekm_tmp_ORDERNUMBER
Stores a reference to the visitor's order number after an order has been generated.
Unique ID
On Exit

Third Party

If you are not using the default text on the Privacy and Terms pages on your EKM online shop and you also use third party code to analyse traffic, for example, you need to ensure that your customers are made aware of this.

You will also need to check that each third party you use on your EKM online shop is GDPR compliant and that this is reflected in your own statement regarding tracking cookies and data shared (if applicable). If you use Google products, you can read about Google’s GDPR compliance on this page. 

As part of this, you will need to be sure that any agencies - this could be your website designer if you have employed one to work on your EKM online shop for you, or a marketing agency who help you by managing your digital marketing campaigns- that their responsibilities regarding access to this data are clearly outlined and it’s protection understood.

To read more about cookies and processing consent on the Information Commissioner's Office website, click here.

[tips] If your EKM online shop is on the Standard, Advanced or Pro tiers, you will be able to use Staff Logins. This is ideal for allowing third-party persons - such as freelance designers for example - to access the back-end of your account without potentially viewing customer data. Read about using Staff Logins by clicking here. [/tips] 

Updates to EKM Email Marketing

The Email Marketing feature on the Features tab of your EKM online shop is Email Marketing, EKM’s own email newsletter platform. We’ve already implemented changes to EKM Email Marketing to ensure that it is compliant prior to the launch of the GDPR legislation:

Storing of consent

We have updated our system to enable the storing of consent information for each contact. Contacts we don’t have stored consent for will be visible via the Non-Consented Contact Group option in the left-hand navigation menu of EKM Email Marketing:

Contacts are added to EKM Email Marketing in one of three ways:

  1. Sign up through a signup form: Contacts signing up in this method receive a confirmation email asking them to confirm they wish to receive campaigns.
  2. Sign up via the checkout of your EKM shop: Contacts signing up in this method actively check a checkbox during checkout.
  3. Manually added by the account holder: As the account holder, you are stating that you have permission to send the contacts you are adding to your campaigns. This is stated on all input screens that are affected.

[remember]Up until the 22nd May 2018 when GDPR comes into effect for EKM Email Marketing, we will allow you to continue to send campaigns to contacts we do not have stored consent for. After that date, the system will only allow you to send to contacts we have stored consent for. [/remember]

Consenting Current EKM Contacts

There are several ways that you may set consent to your existing contacts, it is, however, important to note that by clicking the available consent buttons provided by EKM Email Marketing you are in fact stating that you have consent. You may give consent to your contacts in the following ways:

  1. Re-import from EKM online shop: As contacts from your EKM online shop have provided consent, re-importing them into EKM Email Marketing will ensure that the correct consent is stored and they can be contacted in future campaigns.
  2. Non-Consented Contact Group: In this group, you are able to give consent to all of your non-consented contacts simply by clicking the ‘Consent All’ and confirming your decision. If you do not want to Consent All of your contacts, you are able to give consent to each contact individually.
  3. GDPR Information Modal: The model will appear when you first log into EKM Email Marketing after the GDPR code has gone live. This gives you the opportunity to give consent to all of your contacts immediately. This modal will re-appear shortly before the GDPR legislation comes into effect.
  4. Re-Permission Campaign: You may send a re-permission campaign to your contacts by simply creating a campaign as normal and then adding the RePermission tag. Once the recipient has received this email they can then click the link which will take them to a consent form (in a new browser window) and once they click the button EKM Email Marketing will be automatically updated.

Preferences Link

Within the GDPR legislation is the need to provide a route that will allow recipients to update their personal details. To achieve this we have added a new Preferences link in the footer of each email that allows the recipient to update their personal details (except their email address) that is held by EKM Email Marketing.

Updates to EKM Domains

There are no changes to the EKM Domains platform and your domain will continue to function as normal, however, GDPR has an impact on the Whois data for all registered domains. Currently, personal data such as name, address and email address is visible for all whois lookups.

Whilst it is not a legal requirement to display personal data in a Whois lookup, our domain providers will be taking steps to ensure that access to personal data is given to only those with a legitimate reason for accessing it for domain types where displaying this information is not a legal requirement.

FAQs

In the run-up to the launch of the GDPR legislation, the Customer Support Team have received a number of questions from our existing customers. Below are some of the most frequently asked questions regarding GDPR:

How does GDPR affect EKM?

Since GDPR was announced, EKM has and continues to take steps to review our current privacy policies. The good news is that our current and existing privacy policies are already compliant with the terms set out by the Information Commissioner's Office. There will be an amendment to the current EKM Terms & Conditions to include a Data Processing Agreement clause which will be introduced prior to May 2018.

What has EKM done so far?

  1. We have appointed a dedicated team member to deal with GDPR and ensure compliance;
  2. We have an internal focus group dedicated to ensuring EKM’s terms of service will be continuously reviewed and to ensure any new policies or procedures are GDPR compliant;
  3. We have made updates to EKM Email Marketing to ensure that the platform and its users are compliant;
  4. We are working towards updating our terms to include relevant clauses required by GDPR;
  5. Any new functionality or partnerships are built or entered into with GDPR compliance in mind.

Do we need cookie banners?

In regards to banners or pop-up modals alerting visitors to your EKM online shop that you use cookies, this has not been outlined yet in GDPR legislation. The subject of cookies and their use is addressed in the default Privacy Policy on your EKM online shop, and if you are using your own text on the Privacy Policy page, you need to ensure that the use of cookies is thoroughly explained.

Where is our EKM online shop data stored?

The EKM platform, its content and databases are located on our own servers, housed within a secure data centre in Manchester which is ISO27001 and PCI compliant and has BS5979 security on-site.

Is this data secure?

Yes.

How long do you keep our data and how is it removed, if ever?

We will remove non-essential customer data after a period of six years.

Where are the servers that hold the customer contact details/login details - are they in the EU?

Yes, all EKM data is stored at the data centre in Manchester.

What level of encryption do you use to protect the details?

Sensitive data is encrypted using AES256 and passwords are hashed using SHA256.

Will you inform me if you are hacked and my customer details are stolen within 72 hours of finding out?

Yes, we will, in accordance with GDPR legislation. Where a breach may ‘result in a risk for the rights and freedoms of individuals’ EKM must tell you within 72 hours of our Engineering Team realising that a breach has occurred.

This also refers to you too as an EKM online shop owner, as Data Processors too need to notify their own customers ‘without undue delay’ when they are first made aware of a breach. The only circumstances when this would not be the case would be if the breach was unlikely to present any risk to the rights and freedoms of the data subjects concerned.

Can I charge customers if they ask for a copy of their personal data?

In most cases, you cannot charge customers a fee to provide them with a copy of the personal data you hold for them. However, if the request is 'manifestly unfounded or excessive', you may charge a fee based on the admin costs of completing the request. Also, if the customer requests further copies of their personal data after an initial request, you can apply admin costs in that situation too.

I used to be able to email and telephone my EKM online shop customers with details of sales and promotions using the contact details from their order - will GDPR allow me to do this? 

You cannot contact customers via telephone or email with the aim of selling them something unless they have explicitly given their consent for you to do so. You may want to read this guide which explains how to set up a checkbox for consent on the Checkout Flow of your EKM online shop, which would allow you to gain consent for these kinds of situations.

I amended the default text on my Privacy Webpage a long time ago - where can I access the original version?

You can download a .txt version of that text by clicking the file at the bottom of this Guide. Simply download the file and copy the text onto the Privacy Webpage of your EKM online shop. This is the updated, 'GDPR-friendly' version of the original. If you have always used the default Privacy Webpage text, this update has already been implemented on your EKM online shop. 

Where is EKM's Privacy Policy located?

You can find it here.

Where can I read more about GDPR legislation?

Details about GDPR can be found at the following sites:

The European Union’s GDPR portal

The full GDPR legislation
The Information Commissioner's Office (ico) Guide.

[caution]Please note that this guide is for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal advice. We encourage you to work with legal and other professional counsel to determine precisely how the GDPR might apply to your organization.[/caution]

[contact] If you need our help with your EKM online shop, contact your Ecommerce Expert or the Customer Support Team, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm weekends. If you'd like to suggest a feature or an upgrade on any of the EKM platforms, please let us know on the EKM Suggestions Board. If you have a non-account-specific question to ask the EKM Team, join us in the EKM Community. [/contact]