GDPR and Me

New regulations from the EU are going into effect May 25, 2018. These regulations are designed to protect the privacy of EU citizens on the internet. I wholeheartedly support the spirit of these regulations. I wish the U.S. would do more to protect the privacy of its citizens.

However, trying to make my website and newsletter compliant has been a big headache. I’m not a lawyer nor an IT professional. I’m an indie author. I’m a writer–and I’ve done very little of that lately because I’m so anxious about running afoul of these regulations. I have put up a privacy policy on this website. You can read it here. Apparently, somewhere behind the scenes of my website, WordPress has a database (that is supposedly mine) of the IP addresses and emails of people who comment on my blog posts. I can’t find ANY databases anywhere. Until I can find them and figure out how NOT to collect that information, I’m disabling comments.

I’m still trying to figure this out. I will probably disable the newsletter sign-up thingy until I’m certain it’s GDPR compliant. The main thing about all of this that I find so upsetting is that the big corporations, who probably present more of a threat to people’s privacy (I’m thinking of a big one right now whose CEO’s last name begins with Z) have teams of lawyers and tech gurus at their disposal. I only have me, a bunch of cats, a dog, and a husband whose reaction to all of this was, “You’re a writer. You don’t really need a website and all of that, do you?” (Um…yeah, I do.)  Unlike the big corporations, I do actually care about people’s privacy. I care about my readers. But I don’t know how to navigate any of this.

The more I try to figure all of this out, the more lost I feel. It’s enough to make me wonder if I should just stop everything. I toyed with that idea for a while. Seriously. But being a writer has been my dream since I was very small. I’m not ready to give up on it yet.