GDPR is a regulation that aims to protect the privacy of EU (European Union) citizens. Among other things, it provides users with more control over the personal data that they share with websites.
In case you want to learn more about GDPR, here you can find some further details:
Is the AAWP plugin GDPR compliant?
Yes, our plugin is compliant with GDPR.
Collection of Personal Data
After installing and activating our plugin on your website, it doesn’t collect, store or send any personal data from either you or your site’s visitors.
The only time data is collected, is during a license activation, deactivation or update request. This data is as expected and includes the license key, AAWP version, WordPress version, website name, website URL, website language, and timezone. This data will only be sent to our very own license server. Without, it wouldn’t be possible to activate respectively deactivate a license, as well as updating the plugin to the latest version.
Cookies
In general, our plugin does not work with cookies, with one exception: Our geo-targeting feature temporarily stores the site visitors origin country inside a session cookie.
Geo-Targeting
Actually, geo-targeting is not compliant: In order to determine the country of origin, the current IP address of your site visitor will be analyzed via a free online service.
Right now we don’t see an alternative way to receive your site visitors origin, so we highly recommend not to use geo-targeting, if you want to stay GDPR compliant.
Product Images
As you know, the plugin embeds product images delivered directly from Amazon’s servers, which theoretically grants Amazon access to the IP addresses of your site visitors. In a reverse conclusion, this is GDPR relevant as well.
Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t allow downloading product images due to their terms. Additionally, they didn’t come up with a solution for this so far.
That’s why we decided to implement a so-called image proxy, in order to temporarily solve this situation plugin-side.
Conclusion: What you should do now
Summing up, here are our recommendations from the current point of view:
- Disable geo-targeting
- Enable the image proxy setting
In case you have any further questions, feel free to get in touch with us.
We’re going to update this article as soon as there is new information available.
Legal Disclaimer / Disclosure
We are not lawyers. Nothing on this website should be considered legal advice. Due to the dynamic nature of websites, no single plugin or platform can offer 100% legal compliance. When in doubt, it’s best to consult a specialist internet law attorney to determine if you are in compliance with all applicable laws for your jurisdictions and your use cases.