notebook

I have an important blog post for you today. It’s not exactly exciting, but it will affect your subscriptions to my blog posts, and the ability to comment on my blogs.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but if you follow a number of authors you’ve probably received emails asking you to confirm that you are opting in for their newsletter again. Like the ones I sent out. It ended up carving my mailing list down by two thirds, but at least I know it’s compliant to the new GDPR regulations that go into effect May 25. This affects every single blogger, business website owner, newsletter host, that reaches out to European customers.

In other words: if anybody comments on my blog, subscribes to my newsletter, subscribes to my blog posts, and they are from Europe, I MUST be able to prove that they have opted into those subscriptions and I have to be able to come up with the information that my site collects on them.

What this boils down to is this:

  • I have had to re-create my newsletter/mailing list.
  • Now I have to do the same thing with my blog posts subscribers list.
  • And we have to come up with a new way of allowing comments on the blog so that we can have a handle on what information we are tracking.

Over the coming week I will be putting up a link to a new subscription page which will have a GDPR compliant blog subscription sign-up sheet. If you want to continue to receive updates when I have a new blog post, you will have to subscribe to the new list.

We will be deleting the entire old list shortly before May 25. I cannot port people over. I cannot subscribe them. You will have to do this yourself.

Be aware: this is NOT the same thing as my newsletter/mailing list where I send out updates on my books. This is for those people who want to be notified when I have a new blog post.

As far as comments go, we are still trying to figure out what to do, but the most likely course of action we’ll be taking is to require people to register on my site in order to comment. That way people will know exactly what information we have gathered on them. And then, I will probably be deleting all the old comments off of my blog, because I have no way of collecting the information that is collected there in terms of IP addresses, email addresses, and names. At least not in any sane manner.

Once we have finished with all of this, I will be holding a little contest for blog subscribers only to thank them/you for your patience. I know it’s not easy when a lot of your favorite authors are going through similar situations and asking you to sign up for this and make sure you confirm your opt in, and all of those actions necessary.

But, if you understand that should anybody in Europe complain about a website and that site is found to be out of compliance with the regulations, they can be fined in excess of €2 million. And ain’t nobody got that kind of change around here!

Since I’m sure you don’t want me to be fined (I’d have to skip the country and stop writing as I tried to go into hiding), I thank you in advance for your patience with this matter.

As soon as we have the new sign up page, I will be posting a blog and you will be notified about this if you subscribe to my blog already. Be aware, this may lead to double notifications for just a week or so, and again I beg your patience. This isn’t an easy fix, and the issue is extremely complicated  and affects just about every website owner out there who collects any sort of data whether they mean to or not. As soon as we decide on what to do about blog comments, we’ll let you know here, on the blog.

Meanwhile, I present to you my general state of mind:

Now, stay tune for tomorrow—it’s almost Caturday again!

Share Button
BLOG SUBSCRIBERS PLEASE READ!
Tagged on:             

2 thoughts on “BLOG SUBSCRIBERS PLEASE READ!

  • 05/11/2018 at 4:45 pm
    Permalink

    Love the stress reduction kit. I think I need 3, lol!
    Can’t have leave the country and having you stop writing would be an end of the world event for me! I’ll be complying so fast your head will spin!!

    Reply
  • 05/11/2018 at 11:40 am
    Permalink

    Great, clear post and I LedOL at the stress reduction kit. Thanks!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.