This page is a work-in-progress, and information is updated as we learn more and implement changes. Last updated 2018/05/18.
Our opinion on GDPR is that it is overly broad, burdensome on small businesses and side projects like food blogs, and only multi-million companies with teams of lawyers and programmers can ever be compliant with it. We applaud the effort put into defending consumer information and we are actively trying to follow the intentions behind GDPR, but the nuances and specifics are incomprehensible and too burdensome to ensure full compliance at this time.
The simple truth is this: your data is harvested and shared all day long through every device and service you use to access the internet. Regardless of who claims to be more privacy-centric than anyone else, information will be shared and aggregated privately, be voided through mergers and acquisitions, anonymized-and-de-anonymized for analysis through varying services, and more. It's your responsibility as an adult to do your research and decide which companies you do or don't want to interact with, and whether interacting with them is worth the trade-off in personal information. You make these decisions all day long when you walk down the street and risk being photographed, or share your personal details in person with your bank, who is going to share it with who-knows-what subsidiary.
There's simply more important things to worry about, like what's for dinner.
FeastDesignCo's GDPR Policy
Our current policy is this: If you don't want us to have your information or use it to improve our products and services, send us an email request and we'll delete all your information. That's it.
This will effectively remove you from our customer database and exempt you from receiving support or access to previously purchased products, as we'll have no record of your purchases/transactions. We simply don't have the manpower to play this game, and will continue to focus on customers who are interested in developing a long-term, mutually-beneficial relationship with us.
We're not an ad-supported business and we don't make money by selling your information. We protect our customer information as closely as we protect our own information (and our own personal information is actually in there with yours as well). You can read more about the principles that drive us at https://feastdesignco.com/principles-best-practices/
Q: Who do you share information with?
Here's a list of services we use (or used at some point) to deliver our products/services, and may or may not share varying amounts of information with:
- Google (including gmail, analytics, fonts, and all other services)
- Paypal, Stripe, Square, Shopify
- GitHub, Adobe
- WooCommerce, Yoast, WPRocket, Gravity Forms, CloudFlare
- Mailchimp, Convertkit, Mailgun, Drip, aweber, Active Campaign, Constant Contact
- Helpscout
- WordPress, Studiopress
- CrazyEgg, Optimizely, VisualWebsiteOptimizer, Unbounce
Each of these services may or may not have their own privacy policy and terms of service.
Q: Do you have some GDPR resources for food bloggers?
Here's a list of articles we've read, but don't claim to fully understand, and don't vouch for ourselves:
- https://www.jeffalytics.com/gdpr-ip-addresses-google-analytics
- https://www.optimizepress.com/gdpr-practical-guide-to-compliance/
- https://tosdr.org/
- https://wordpress.org/news/2018/05/wordpress-4-9-6-privacy-and-maintenance-release/
Q: Is FeastDesignCo.com GDPR compliant?
We don't know. We have yet to find a usable guide to determine this, what the requirements are, who is covered, and more. We'll continue monitoring news and articles as they're released and working towards compliance.
Please send us any articles you think might be useful.
Q: Do you recommend any tools to help protect my privacy?
We're big fans of the "uBlock Origin" browser plugin for ad blocking. We've also heard good things about the "ghostery" browser plugin for privacy, but haven't used or tested it ourselves.
Another tip we've made use of is to use the browser's "incognito mode" for searches and browsing that you don't want tracked or affiliated with your Google/Facebook/other accounts.
The search engine DuckDuckGo.com is comparable to Google, but is privacy-centric.
Lastly, we recommend performing web searches on an HTTPS-enable web page at Google.com or DuckDuckGo.com. Do not use the browser bar, or your devices default search box to perform unencrypted searches as this leaks your search data to your ISP (and anyone else monitoring traffic).