GDPR is everywhere at the moment as the new regulations are scheduled to come into effect any day now. In this latest version of Property Hive we’ve added some new features to help you comply with these changes and will be looking at these in more detail in this post.
A New ‘GDPR’ Settings Area
Once you’ve updated to version 1.4.18 of Property Hive you’ll notice that under the settings area there is a new ‘GDPR’ section. In here are a number of new settings relating to data storage and showing new disclaimers.
The first setting gives you the ability to specify whether property enquiries are actually stored in the database or not. If selected they will still go into the ‘Enquiries’ section within Property Hive, else they will not. Either way, emails and any auto-responders will still be sent.
The next two options are quick ways to display a disclaimer that users must accept before being able to submit either the property enquiry form or applicant registration forms.
Within these fields you can add links to other pages so it’s a great way to link off to your Privacy Policy (which we hope you’ve checked and amended).
Other Things To Consider Relating to GDPR
Clean up existing data
If you’ve already got data stored in your database, for example existing property enquiries, you could consider deleting them if they’re not useful to you anymore.
Re-Permissioning existing contacts
If you use Property Hive to store applicants and you need to re-permission (also known as ‘Permission Pass’) them we recommend exporting them to a workable format such as CSV and use an email campaign manager to correspond with them and get them to opt-in to keeping their details on record. At this time we have no plans to do anything regarding re-permissioning.
WordPress makes data searchable and deletable
One of the criteria for GDPR is that you must make user data organized and accessible. WordPress already comes with search functionality built-in which makes it easy to find someones details. From there you can let someone know what data you store on them, as well as permanently delete it.
Re-Evaluate your hosting security and put plans in place for a data breach
No website is 100% secure but you (or your web hoster) can put measures in place to make it as safe as possible to ensure your user’s data is kept safe. Always cater for the worst case scenario and have plans in place should a data breach occur.
GDPR is not your web developers responsibility
A final note I’d like to add to this is, if you’re an estate agent that uses a web developer to make changes to your site, it’s not their responsibility to make sure your website is compliant. It’s ultimately your website and your data so please ensure you’re in the know-how and don’t leave it up to someone else.
We’re All Ears
We are not lawyers. We are developers who, like many of you, are having to adjust and learn and read as much material as possible to do what we can to assist you in complying with the changes in time.
This is the first revision of GDPR compliance that has been added to Property Hive but I’m sure it won’t be the last. If you’ve got any future change suggestions on we can improve this, or any feedback in general, we’d love to hear from you.
