New Privacy Features and Updated Policies

OPTe’s mission is to make it easier for everyone to have a WordPress website, and protecting your privacy is at the core of that mission.  We’ve always kept our users’ data personal and private, and we’ve never been in the business of selling your personal information. While GDPR only holds us accountable for how we handle EU users’ personal data, we’ve taken this opportunity to review our practices and ensure that our high standards for data privacy extend to everyone on our network.

Over the coming weeks we’re rolling out updates to our privacy features and policies along side many in the WordPress community. You’ll have more control over your personal information and more detail on what information we keep and what we do with it. The updates will also make sure we comply with new privacy laws, and will help you do the same for your own website or store.

New Privacy Features

Over the past several months, the WordPress core development team, Automattic, and other industry leaders have been working hard to bring new privacy-features and information to the community.  We want to give you more visibility into the personal data we use and more control over the data you share with us.

Recently we’ve added:

• More detailed information on the data our products collect and use.
• Additional contracts (Data Processing Agreements) for paid users who require them to comply with data protection and privacy laws. If you need a Data Processing Agreement, let us know by contacting support for your product.
• A way for users to request access to their personal data. (WordPress 4.9.6 Privacy and Maintenance Release)
• Account closure for OPTe.io accounts.
• An updated cookie policy that explains the cookies we use in our services.

We will be releasing information and features to help you and your site meet the requirements of new privacy laws, like Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) that goes into effect on May 25, 2018. You can read the full text of the GDPR, as well as the European Commission’s summary. New features include: a new “cookie and consent” notification that Jetpack connected sites can add to their sites.

These updates are in addition to the privacy protections we’ve always had in place to help you control your content, keep it secure, or even move your site to another WordPress host.

What’s New in Our Policies?

We updated our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service. Here are some of the updates you’ll see:

• Added information to our Privacy Policy about the types of data that we collect, the ways in which we use it, and the measures we take to keep your data safe.
• Updated our Cookie Policy to provide more details about data collection and your choices.
• We added a new Privacy Notice to explain the data that we collect, on behalf of our users, about visitors to our users’ websites.
• We updated our Terms of Service to reflect the importance of data protection and privacy laws. Our Terms of Service require that our users comply with applicable laws and regulations as the site owners.

Our new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service will take effect on May 25, 2018. If you continue to use our services on or after May 25, 2018, you acknowledge that your use will be subject to our new Privacy Policy and you agree to be bound by our new Terms.

And there’s more to come! We’ll announce more detailed information about privacy features here  — follow us there for the latest.