In reply to Carl Hancock.

Amen.

But I find it hard to say that "whatever regulation" adds burden to site owners. This is the equivalent of saying that following the changes in traffic laws is a "burden" on people that drive. Following the regulation, even if you need to hire a consultant/lawyer once a year, it is just the cost of doing business, and businesses have a lot of regulation all around.

The elephant in the room is actually comments, not contact forms. since comment are on by default while contact form plugins needs to be deliberately installed and configured. Some people will regard the IP addresses collected by wordpress as sensitive private info .... And this brings us to akismet which no one knows what it stores and where.