Question Regarding Data Protection Act

  • Are there any data protection issues with a personal blog which offers visitors the ability to leave comments and trackbacks?

    The reason I ask this is that upon leaving a comment I assume that the visitors name and email is stored into the WP database.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Not that I’m aware of. Under DPA, you are allowed to retain information that is required in order for you to carry out your business. Within a blog context, retaining names and email addresses would (I imagine) be considered an integral part of operating an effective commenting/discussion system. You should also bear in mind that your visitors are not required to give you their real names and they can use a disposable email address. So it is questionable whether any of the data that you do retain could be used to identify any one specific individual.

    As long as you do not use the retained data for anything else (such as mass emailing), you should be fine.

    Thread Starter Kruncher

    (@kruncher)

    Thank you for your response, it is appreciated.

    Do you know if there is a requirement for a non-business blog to be registered with the DPA?

    Thanks again.

    To the best of my knowledge, there’s no requirement – although it does depend upon the data you are collecting and what you’re doing with it.

    See https://www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/data_protection/notification/do_i_need_to_notify.aspx

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • The topic ‘Question Regarding Data Protection Act’ is closed to new replies.