6 min read
GDPR - The new General Data Protection Regulation
You can read the full Data Processing Agreement here.
Annex 1 to the Data Processing Agreement - Instructions and information.
What is the GDPR?
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is the new data protection regulation that replaces the Personal Data Act (PuL) and applies as law in all EU member states from May 25, 2018. The law is designed to strengthen the rights of the individual in terms of personal privacy.
The law applies to all processing of personal data. Any information by which a natural person can be directly or indirectly identified, such as
- e-mail address
- Purchase history linked to an individual
- Address information
- Picture of person
- Descriptions about customer in customer service
Personal data processing agreement
Abicart handles personal data on behalf of our customers. All customers (shop owners) in Abicart will therefore need to sign a personal data assistant agreement with Abicart. You can find this under your profile.
You can read the full data processing agreement here.
What do I need to do myself in the shop to comply with the GDPR?
Publish information in your webshop about which customer data is saved (preferably under Terms & Info):
"We save the following personal data about our customers:
Customers: First Name, Last Name, Company/Organization, Email, Person/Organization number, VAT number, Address, Postcode, City, Country, Phone number.
Orders: IP address, E-mail, , Person/organization, VAT number, Address, Company, First name, Last name, Address, Postal code, City, Phone number.
As a customer, you can request the extraction, modification or deletion of this data at any time."
Do you collect email addresses to send out newsletters? If so, you should have a clear heading for this in the checkout, for example, "Yes please. I want a newsletter" so that the customer understands what they are signing up for.
If you have a customer club, membership or similar via customer groups, other rules apply. If the customer has approved and registered in the store to be able to log in and receive special offers, access a different range than end customers and / or is a retailer, you indicate in your terms and conditions why you need to save this data longer than the normal time which is one year.
More information can be found in Appendix 1 to the data processing agreement: "Information and instructions for webshop owners in Abicart" here.
What does Abicart do so that I can easily clear old customer data?
We have built a number of features to facilitate the management of old customer data in the store.
According to Swedish law, you must save order data for seven years. The store owner needs to make a choice in admin (Orders -> Settings) how long the customer data should be saved on the orders and then the personal data will be deleted after this time automatically.
If you have a Swedish company, you choose "After 7 years" in the list.
E-mail addresses for newsletters.
Many people think that you have to send out an email to all customers so that they sign up again in order to send newsletters. This is not really true because if you have had a clear and clear text on your page when the customer signed up for the newsletter, the customer has already given consent.
If you still want to send out an email to all customers to sign up for newsletters again, we can recommend Mailchimp, which is a tool for sending out newsletters and they have a ready-made function for this.
However, there are new rules on how long you can save an e-mail address in the customer register. Depending on the industry you belong to, different rules apply, but for a store that sells consumables, it is about one year you can save the data. If you sell motor vehicles, for example, it is 4-5 years.
To easily remove old customers, we have built a function under Customers -> Customer register -> the field "Last active before".
Here you can select a date, for example a year back in time and then click on the search button. Then all customers who have not shopped after this date will be displayed. Select all customers by checking the box to the left of "Customer number", then select "Remove selected customers" in the list above.
NOTE! Please note that by default 50 customers are displayed at a time. If there are more customers than 50 to be deleted, you can choose to show more customers on each page in the "Show number" list.
Mandatory approvals
There is a checkbox by default in the checkout where all buyers must agree to the store's terms and conditions before completing the purchase so you do not need to add this yourself.
Note that this feature only works in the latest version of our responsive themes Not classic themes. If you have a Checkout solution, such as Klarna Checkout, no checkbox is displayed as Klarna has chosen not to implement this .
If you have created separate pages for, for example, the store's privacy policy and want customers to approve this as well, you can now create several checkboxes that must be approved at checkout.
First, you create your own page under "My pages" -> New page and enter all the information there. In our example, we create a new page called "Privacy Policy".
To add a checkbox to the checkout, go to the theme (Appearance -> Themes -> select theme, edit) and then Content -> Checkout -> Mandatory approvals.
Click on the "+Add checkbox" button and the following fields will appear:
- Checkbox title, for example "I accept the store's"
- Link text, for example "privacy policy"
On the right, under Link URL -> Pages, there is a list of all the store's own pages. Remember to create your own page first. Otherwise you cannot choose to link to the page.
Do not forget to click on the save button.