What does privacy by design mean for a website?

Privacy by design means considering how a website affects personal information from the initial design stage and throughout its operation. It influences what the site collects, how integrations behave and how visitors exercise their rights.

For a website, this can involve:

• Selecting tools that collect only the information needed.

• Preventing consent-dependent tracking from starting before permission.

• Limiting staff access to personal information.

• Building retention and deletion controls into the system.

• Reviewing privacy effects when features or vendors change.

Privacy by default complements this approach by limiting routine processing to what is necessary for each specific purpose.

The ICO’s guidance on data protection by design and by default explains the UK GDPR requirements.

An effective cookie consent implementation can support these controls, but privacy by design also covers forms, accounts, backend systems and the information shared with service providers.