Go to Store Settings > Settings > Accounts and Privacy to control options relating to customer accounts and data retention.
Accounts #
Guest Checkout
- Allow customers to place orders without an account – Allows customers to check out without creating an account. Orders will not be tied to a user account in WordPress.
- Allow customers to log into an existing account during checkout – This displays a login form and prompt on the checkout page if the customer is not already logged in.
Account Creation
- Allow customers to create an account during checkout
- Allow customers to create an account on the My account page
- Automatically generate username from customer email – If this is disabled, there will be an input box for the user to create their own username.
- Automatically generate customer password – If this is disabled, there will be an input box for the user to set their own password. Note that while the password strength notification will be displayed at Checkout, customers can choose any password so as to not limit conversions. On the My Account page, the password will need to meet certain complexity requirements (i.e. a combination of the number of characters and mixture of uppercase / lowercase / numeric / symbol characters).
Account erasure requests
- Remove personal data from orders – WordPress 4.9 allows you to remove personal data on request. When doing this, if you enable this option, user data will also be removed from your orders if they belong to the user being erased.
- Remove access to downloads – WordPress 4.9 allows you to remove personal data on request. When doing this, if you enable this option, download data will also be removed if it belongs to the user being erased. The erased user will no longer have access to any purchased downloads if this happens.
Personal data removal
- Allow personal data to be removed in bulk from orders – Adds a new bulk action to remove personal data on the Orders page. Useful if you need to manually anonymize orders in bulk.
Privacy policy #
- Privacy Page – Select a page to act as your privacy policy. Using [privacy_policy] will link to this page. Some themes also use this option to link to a privacy policy in other places, such as the footer. This feature was added in WordPress 4.9.
- Registration privacy policy – Shown on the registration form on the My Account page. You should include information about your privacy policy, and link to your page privacy policy page for more information.
- Checkout privacy policy – Shown on the checkout form. You should include information about your privacy policy, and link to your page privacy policy page for more information.
More information about:
How to setup GPDR and Cookie information
Personal data retention #
This section allows you to decide how long to keep order data on your store. You should specify how long your site will retain data in your privacy policy; consider what makes sense for local laws such as the EU GDPR.
For each option, enter a number and choose the duration from days, weeks, months, or years. Leaving these options blank will disable them.
- Retain inactive accounts – Inactive accounts are accounts which have not logged in nor placed an order for the specified duration.
- Retain pending orders – Pending orders are unpaid or abandoned and should not need to be fulfilled.
- Retain failed orders – Failed orders are unpaid or abandoned and should not need to be fulfilled.
- Retain cancelled orders – Cancelled orders were orders cancelled on purpose by either the admin or the customer, or timed out waiting for payment.
- Retain completed orders – Completed orders were fulfilled in the past.
Personal Data Exporter #
WordPress 4.9.6 has the ability to export personal data associated with an email address to an HTML file. WooCommerce adds to the generated export file, exporting the following data:
- Customer address/account information
- Orders associated with the given email address
- Download permissions and logs associated with the given email address
To ensure requests are genuine, a confirmation email is sent to verify the request. The verification process:
- Enter an email address or username.
- User is notified via email with a confirmation link.
- Confirmation link is used, and request is marked “confirmed.”
- Email with link to download their personal data is sent to the user.
Example of a Personal Data File:
