You have probably heard all about the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) policies being mandated from the 25th May 2018. It’s a new set of laws aimed at enhancing the protection of EU citizens’ personal data and increasing the obligations of organizations to deal with that data in transparent and secure ways. 

The GDPR applies not only to EU-based businesses, but also to any business that controls or processes data of EU citizens.At Launchpad6 we have been working hard to not only ensure we can comply with GDPR but also that you can execute your contests and comply with GDPR standards.   

Here is a list of changes introduced in the latest ContestPad release that will enable you to support GDPR.  

A key requirement of GDPR includes the right for a customer to request that they are permanently deleted. We now have a permanent delete option which not only deletes a users account details but also all related entries.  

In order to use voters email addresses or social details for your marketing campaigns you need to ensure that your voters provide permission through an opt-in. We now provide the capability for an opt-in function for voters.  

It is important that when voters or entrants provide their personal details that you keep a record of the terms in which the users agreed to when they provided them. This is particularly important if you want to subsequently use personal details to market to the participants. We have added the ability to provide an audit of any opt-in field which includes the date and time consent was provided and the link to the terms and conditions in which consent was provided. These details can also be exported with the rest of the user, entrants and voters details.   

We have now boosted our security even more. This includes features such as a boost to minimum password strength standards, enforcing SSL for all contest sites, email notifications to site administrator for failed login attempts and more.  

GDPR mandates that even details such as IP addresses are considered personal, so you need to ensure that users agree to allow you to capture this information. Our platforms use cookies and other information provided by the browser to track information such as IP addresses and session validation in order to identify users. We have added the ability to turn on site tracking notification messages that visitors must agree to in order to have full access the site.  

The added great news is that we have historically provided many features that allowed you to comply with GDPR. These include the ability to update personal details for entrants and registered users, the ability to export all user, voter and entrant details, the ability to create opt-in checkboxes with linked terms and conditions and more.

We are determined to ensure that like us, you can comply with GDPR and provide better, more secure, more transparent experiences for your customers using Launchpad6.