Another day, another GDPR email! The good news is that the May 25th deadline is tomorrow, so hopefully you don't have to auto-filter these into your trash for much longer. Although our lawyers tell us you should definitely not be doing that.

Anyhow, this is our email, much like the dozens (hundreds?) you've already "read". We'll try to keep it short and sweet.

What even is the GDPR?

The GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, is the European Union’s new data privacy law. It applies to a wide range of businesses - so if you have customers in Europe, or your business is based in Europe, this very likely affects you. We wrote a quick GDPR guide to get you started, but beyond that you should probably pony up a little cash to ask a lawyer.

Why is every company everywhere emailing me about the GDPR?

GDPR basically made most companies make changes to their policies to better explain how they handle data. At Big Cartel, this means we have a brand new Privacy Policy detailing the sort of data we collect from you (it isn't much) and what we do with that data (use it to help you run your shop). We also have a new Data Processing Addendum (DPA) that explains how we collect and use data from your customers.

What other policies did you change?

Glad you asked! We also did some other lawyerly things like update our Merchant User Agreement to reference our new Privacy Policy, DPA, and other GDPR-related points. We also updated our prohibited items to prohibit CBD, and to allow you to sell martial arts weapons (because we trust you to be responsible with these). We're also no longer allowing new stores to sell alcohol, but we're allowing stores that have already received our permission to continue to do so for now.

What now?

Technically you should read all of these legal docs, make sure you're complying, make sure you still wanna do business with us, and maybe call an attorney to see if you need to do anything else to comply with GDPR requirements. And since you're the type that reads entire legal emails, we know you will.

– The Big Cartel team