We're sure you've heard a lot about GDPR recently and you've likely received many emails about updates and privacy changes in the last few weeks. Since GDPR obligations can seem a bit confusing, Weebly has created a document to help explain the responsibilities of website owners under GDPR.

Your Responsibilities Under GDPR
If you are doing business with or collecting any kind of personal data from individuals located in the European Union, you will need to be compliant with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect on May 25, 2018. To assist you with these changes, Weebly has added tools like an improved cookie notification banner and a privacy policy generator.

SSL is the backbone of our secure Internet and it protects your sensitive information as it travels across the world's computer networks. SSL is essential for protecting your website, even if it doesn't handle sensitive information like credit cards. It provides privacy, critical security and data integrity for both your websites and your users' personal information.

The primary reason why SSL is used is to keep sensitive information sent across the Internet encrypted so that only the intended recipient can understand it. This is important because the information you send on the Internet is passed from computer to computer to get to the destination server. Any computer in between you and the server can see your credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and other sensitive information if it is not encrypted with an SSL certificate. When an SSL certificate is used, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the server you are sending the information to. This protects it from hackers and identity thieves.

In addition to encryption, a proper SSL certificate also provides authentication. This means you can be sure that you are sending information to the right server and not to an imposter trying to steal your information. Why is this important? The nature of the Internet means that your customers will often be sending information through several computers. Any of these computers could pretend to be your website and trick your users into sending them personal information.  It is only possible to avoid this by using a proper Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and getting an SSL Certificate from a trusted SSL provider.

Why are SSL providers important?
Trusted SSL providers will only issue an SSL certificate to a verified company that has gone through several identity checks. Certain types of SSL certificates, like EV SSL Certificates, require more validation than others. How do you know if an SSL provider is trusted? You can use our SSL Wizard to compare SSL providers that are included in most web browsers. Web browser manufactures verify that SSL providers are following specific practices and have been audited by a third-party using a standard such as WebTrust.

Web browsers give visual cues, such as a lock icon or a green bar, to make sure visitors know when their connection is secured. This means that they will trust your website more when they see these cues and will be more likely to buy from you. SSL providers will also give you a trust seal that instills more trust in your customers.

HTTPS also protects against phishing attacks. A phishing email is an email sent by a criminal who tries to impersonate your website. The email usually includes a link to their own website or uses a man-in-the-middle attack to use your own domain name. Because it is very difficult for these criminals to receive a proper SSL certificate, they won’t be able to perfectly impersonate your site. This means that your users will be far less likely to fall for a phishing attack because they will be looking for the trust indicators in their browser, such as a green address bar, and they won’t see it.

In order to accept credit card information on your website, you must pass certain audits that show that you are complying with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards. One of the requirements is properly using an SSL Certificate.

With so many advantages, why would anyone not use SSL? Are there any disadvantages to using SSL certificates? Cost is an obvious disadvantage. SSL providers need to set up a trusted infrastructure and validate your identity so there is a cost involved. This has been alleviated by increased competition in the industry and the introduction of providers like Let's Encrypt. Performance is another disadvantage to SSL. Because the information that you send has to be encrypted by the server, it takes more server resources than if the information weren’t encrypted. The performance difference is only noticeable for web sites with very large numbers of visitors and can be minimized with special hardware in such cases.

Overall, the disadvantages of using SSL are few and the advantages far outweigh them. It is critical that you properly use SSL on all websites. Proper use of SSL certificates will help protect your customers, help protect you, and help you to gain your customers trust and sell more.

Weebly provides directions on how to add an SSL Certificate to your Website.

Using a clear, well-thought-out, and easy to find privacy policy establishes trust with customers. Why? Because once they know you'll protect their data, they may be more likely to buy — and to tell their friends to buy, too.

It's also the law. A good privacy policy should ideally include some explanation for why you're using the data you're using, the steps you take to protect such data, and how a customer can contact you if they have questions or concerns. To help you get started, Weebly has created a privacy policy template. Here's how to do it if you take the tougher road of writing it all yourself.

What's Required
Let's start with the sorts of data that's personally identifying:

• Names
• Email addresses
• Location (city, town, state, street address)
• A Social Security number

States and foreign countries can also have additional privacy requirements, so make sure that your policy is comprehensive. Spending an hour or two studying the requirements is better than suffering a fine; TermsFeed has a free privacy policy tutorial if you've no idea where to start.

Best Practices to Put in Place Today
Once you've studied the requirements and have an idea for what you have to say to meet legal requirements, take these steps to make sure your customers know they'll be well-protected when shopping at your eCommerce site:

1. Create a new page to include your policy. Including privacy policy text as "fine print" at the bottom of your store's home page won't do anything to engender trust. Choose instead to have a distinct page where your policy is spelled out in plain language.
   
2. Link to it from your homepage. You can use the homepage of your store to highlight your privacy policy, just don't do it in a way that leaves shoppers squinting. Instead, include a link in the navigation to your new page. Make it obvious and easy to click.
3. Use reassuring language. Once readers arrive, greet them with language that's respectful and reassuring. Here's an overly simple example: "Thank you so much for shopping with us! We're glad you're here! Please let us know if you have any questions, and in the meantime we want you know that we collect some personally identifying information such as [list everything here] to better serve you. We take the responsibility of protecting your data very seriously, which is why we [list steps taken to protect data here]. But again, if there's anything you need to know more about or simply have questions [include specific instructions for getting in contact here]. Thanks again for visiting!"

Does your site have a policy yet? Getting started on one is easier than ever with Weebly's new privacy policy generator tool.

Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice. Please consult our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and our Privacy Policy Generator Disclaimer before using the templates.

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