The “Export Personal Data” and “Erase Personal Data” features are related to personal data handling. WordPress has implemented them in order to help site owners create GDPR compliant websites.
You will find these features in the “Tools” section of your WordPress admin dashboard.
Both of these features are email-based ways in which site owners can handle personal data requests.
1. Export Personal Data
A website owner receives a request from one of the visitors of the website. In this request, the visitor asks to see the data regarding his/her email address that is being used by the site.
With the new “Export Personal Data” confirmation tool the site owner is able to send a confirmation request to the specific email address.
Once the visitor has confirmed that the email address is indeed his/hers, the website owner can download a file with the requested data about the email address and forward it to the visitor. This file is automatically generated by WordPress.
The personal data that a website stores/uses also depends on the plugins that the website is created with or has integrated in it.
Since a few of the Thrive Products also store personal data, we wanted to make sure that our products are integrated in this process.
What is exported when you use Thrive products?
In the case of an export request, certain information used by Thrive products will also be exported.
Thus, in the file that is generated by WordPress, we have added a few tables with the personal data associated with email addresses that our products store.
To showcase this exactly, below you will find the specific information that is added to the file, generated after a visitor sends and confirms the export request:
Thrive Comments
- Data exported when a visitor posts a comment:
- Data exported when a visitor subscribes to comments for a post:
Thrive Ovation
Thrive Quiz Builder
Thrive Leads
Note: the data is stored by the “Lead Generation Element” in Thrive Leads.
2. Erase Personal Data
This feature works similarly to the export feature. A visitor sends a request to the website owner to delete the personal data about his/her email address that is stored/used by the website.
Then, the website owner sends a confirmation request to the specific email address. In case the visitor confirms that he/she would indeed like the data regarding that email erased, the website owner can do so with the help of the “Erase Personal Data” tool.
This will either result in erasing all the data related to the email address or making the information anonymous, depending on the various plugins.
What happens when you delete the data stored by Thrive Products?
Here is what happens to the personal data related to emails that our products store, if the “Erase Personal Data” feature is used:
In case you need further information on certain Thrive products, please follow this link.