WordPress 4.9.6 Privacy and Maintenance Release

WordPress 4.9.6 is now available. This is a privacy and maintenance release. We encourage you to update your sites to take advantage of the new privacy features.

A decorative header featuring the text "GDPR" and a lock inside of a blue shield, on multicolor green background.

Privacy

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) takes effect on May 25. The GDPR requires companies and site owners to be transparent about how they collect, use, and share personal data. It also gives individuals more access and choice when it comes to how their own personal data is collected, used, and shared.

It’s important to understand that while the GDPR is a European regulation, its requirements apply to all sites and online businesses that collect, store, and process personal data about EU residents no matter where the business is located.

You can learn more about the GDPR from the European Commission’s Data Protection page.

We’re committed to supporting site owners around the world in their work to comply with this important law. As part of that effort, we’ve added a number of new privacy features in this release.

Comments

A screenshot of a comment form, where the new "Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment" checkbox is featured.

Logged-out commenters will be given a choice on whether their name, email address, and website are saved in a cookie on their browser.

Privacy Policy Page

A screenshot of the new Privacy Settings page.

Site owners can now designate a privacy policy page. This page will be shown on your login and registration pages. You should manually add a link to your policy to every page on your website. If you have a footer menu, that’s a great place to include your privacy policy.

In addition, we’ve created a guide that includes insights from WordPress and participating plugins on how they handle personal data. These insights can be copied and pasted into your site’s privacy policy to help you get started.

If you maintain a plugin that collects data, we recommend including that information in WordPress’ privacy policy guide. Learn more in our Privacy section of the Plugin Handbook.

Data Handling

A screenshot of the new Export Personal Data tools page. Several export requests are listed on the page, to demonstrate how the new feature will work.

Data Export

Site owners can export a ZIP file containing a user’s personal data, using data gathered by WordPress and participating plugins.

Data Erasure

Site owners can erase a user’s personal data, including data collected by participating plugins.

Howdy,

A request has been made to perform the following action on your account:

Export Personal Data

To confirm this, please click on the following link:
http://.wordpress.org/wp-login.php?action=confirmaction…

You can safely ignore and delete this email if you do not want to
take this action.

This email has been sent to [email protected].

Regards,
Your friends at WordPress
http://wordpress.org

Site owners have a new email-based method that they can use to confirm personal data requests. This request confirmation tool works for both export and erasure requests, and for both registered users and commenters.

Maintenance

95 updates were made in WordPress 4.9.6. In addition to the above, particularly of note were:

“Mine” has been added as a filter in the media library.
When viewing a plugin in the admin, it will now tell you the minimum PHP version required.
We’ve added new PHP polyfills for forwards-compatibility and proper variable validation.
TinyMCE was updated to the latest version (4.7.11).

This post has more information about all of the issues fixed in 4.9.6 if you’d like to learn more.

Download WordPress 4.9.6 or venture over to Dashboard → Updates and click “Update Now.” Sites that support automatic background updates are already beginning to update automatically.

Please note that if you’re currently on WordPress 4.9.3, you should manually update your site immediately.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to WordPress 4.9.6:
Aaron D. Campbell, Aaron Jorbin, abdullahramzan, Adam Silverstein, Alain Schlesser, allendav, Andrea Fercia, Andrea Middleton, Andrew Ozz, Ayesh Karunaratne, Birgir Erlendsson (birgire), bridgetwillard, Burlington Bytes, Chetan Prajapati, claudiu, Corey McKrill, Daniel Bachhuber, David Herrera, Dominik Schilling (ocean90), Ella Van Dorpe, Eric Daams, Fernando Claussen, Garrett Hyder, Gary Pendergast, Heather Burns, Helen Hou-Sandi, herregroen, Ian Dunn, ibelanger, imath, Jb Audras, Jeffrey Paul, Jeremy Felt, Jesper V Nielsen, JJJ, Joe McGill, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Josepha, jrf, Kåre Mulvad Steffensen, Laken Hafner, laurelfulford, lbenicio, macbookandrew, Marius L. J., Mel Choyce, Michael Nelson, Mike Jolley, Pascal Casier, pbrocks, postphotos, Prashant Baldha, PressTigers, programmin, Robin Cornett, Sergey Biryukov, Stefano Lissa, Stephane Daury (stephdau), Subrata Sarkar, Tammie Lister, teddytime, thomasplevy, Timothy Jacobs, Tobias Zimpel, Tom J Nowell, Tor-Bjorn Fjellner, Towhidul Islam, voneff, William Earnhardt, and Xenos (xkon) Konstantinos.