Do I Seriously Warrant a Website Privacy Policy?



I am asked a lot about whether a selected site wants an internet privacy policy or not. My reply to all those different websites is the same : for the love of little puppies, yes. Irrespective of what your subject matter or nature of your website, whatever if you’re making an attempt to Make Money Online or not, you have to have a privacy policy.

NOTE : Now before I am getting into this any farther I must make one thing VERY CLEAR it’s not that I am Alawyer and so don’t take anything I post here as legal help. You are on your own there so if you’re unsure then check with a lawyer.

The reason you need one, as I mentioned in the title of this post, is to cover your ass. With all of the stories and talk about the FTC and the changes that are coming you don’t wish to be unprepared for the astonishing.

A web privacy policy states the terms and conditions under which your site handles the personal information that it obtains from anyone that visits your site. What that means for you is that, because you had a posted policy, noone can come to you after visiting your website and bitch that you misused their information or didnt inform them about how their information was going to be used.

You may think that you dont need a privacy policy because your site isnt hosted in a state or country that has any laws that protect consumer privacy on the web. But you are not basically protected by that if a user who does live in one of those places takes offense to the way their information was employed, and you didnt divulge that it might happen in your privacy policy, then you could be liable.

Yes, I know, what are the chances of that happening to your website, but you never can tell. And frankly, putting a link to a privacy policy on your homepage is not that tough to do, and it covers any possibility of liability, so why wouldnt you do it?

So if you dont have a privacy policy prepared you need to get one now. While youwill find lots of different examples of privacy policies from all over the web, do not just copy one from another site and paste in your company name over theirs. You need to make certain that you privacy policy covers you for precisely the way you use the info of the users who come to your website.

Heres what your privacy policy needs to incorporate :

• An explanation of how you will communicate any changes to the privacy policy to your users if/when it happens.
• An explanation of how you use that information you collect from your users.
• Your contact information so people can contact you if they have any questions about the privacy policy.
• An explanation of what kind of information you collect from people who visit your site.

Continue reading the rest of Online Privacy Policy…