There are several laws in place globally to protect consumers.

And guess what? Websites who don’t follow the law will be fined. The internet has no boundaries. GDPR is one of those laws that protect consumers located in one country who visits your site in another country. Don’t wait for a lawyer from Brussels to send you a lawsuit before you pay attention to the laws. Steps you need to take to have a compliant website is not that complicated. But then again. Law is never uncomplicated.

DIY? I wouldn’t consider it for a second.

SSL certificates

Chrome in particular demanded this security. They want all sites to be at this level of security: https://

Previous to this demand only sites demanding credit card transactions had to be SSL certified.
What is SSL – Secure Sockets Layer
What does is mean?
The certificate allows encrypted data to pass between browsers and websites. The information a consumer shares with your company should be encrypted. Minimum pages that need this encryption are your login page for members, contact page where consumers share their personal data with you so you could respond to their query and payment pages. The law determines the level of the sensitive data that is exchanged.
Once you have your certificate you allow browsers like Chrome to check your site and verify that you are registered and valid website(URL).
All browsers don’t demand it, but if a visitor who uses Chrome lands on the contact form on your website
Chrome will scream MALWARE!
You don’t want this. Especially if you are paying for traffic to come to your site.

Accessibility

This is a law that was passed recently in Canada and United States
it allows people with dissability to open a case of discrimination against you. Yes and sue you.
Does it apply in Trinidad and Tobago? Not sure.
The internet is global and any one in the world can arrive at your site.
Let’s not wait for it to happen and then seek protection or have to go into litigation.

GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation

This is latest regulation on the web and the one following in 2019 will be even worse.
It is a regulation out of the EU. It will become law on May 25th.
Canada has it’s own version CASL – Canada’s Anti-Spam Law
US Can-Spam Laws
Before the launch of GDPR most laws just touched on how you collect emails and what you send to those email recipients.
Today GDPR is going the next few steps
How you process data from people. Why you collect data. How you manage data protection. and much more…
Stay tuned for my next blog on GDPR and what you must do. In the meantime please start thinking of how you currently protect consumers data.