Why You Need an Online Privacy Policy – To Cover Your ASS of Course

By admin | Nov 25, 2009

I get asked a lot about whether or not a particular website needs an online privacy policy or not. My answer to all those different websites is the same: for the love of little puppies, yes. No matter what your subject matter or nature of your website, you need to have a privacy policy.

NOTE: Now before i get into this any farther I do need to make one thing VERY CLEAR… I AM NOT A LAWYER and therefore do not take anything I post here as legal advice. You are on your own there… so if you are not sure then check with a lawyer.

online privacy policy The reason you need one, as I mentioned in the title of this post, is to cover your ass. With all the news and talk about the FTC and the changes that are coming you do NOT want to be unprepared for the unexpected.

An online privacy policy states the terms and conditions under which your website handles the personal information that it obtains from anyone who visits your site. What that means for you is that, because you had a posted policy, no one can come to you after visiting your site and complain that you misused their information or didn’t inform them about how their information was going to be used.

You may think that you don’t need a privacy policy because your site isn’t hosted in a state or country that has any laws that protect consumer privacy online. But you’re not actually protected by that – if a user who does live in one of those places takes offense to the way their information was used, and you didn’t disclose that it would 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 know. And frankly, putting a link to a privacy policy on your homepage is not that hard to do, and it covers any chance of liability, so why wouldn’t you do it?

So if you don’t have a privacy policy in place, you need to get one now. While you can find lots of different examples of privacy policies from all over the internet, don’t just copy one from another site and paste in your company name over theirs. You need to make sure that you privacy policy covers you for exactly the way you use the information of the users who come to your site.

Here’s what your privacy policy needs to include:

An explanation of what kind of information you collect from people who visit your site.
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 how you will communicate any changes to the privacy policy to your users if/when it happens.

And, if your site has a forum, comments section, or some other kind of interactive content that requires people to register to participate, then you also need to include a statement about how people can review or make changes to their personal information they provided to you.

Now that you have a privacy policy in place, you need to display it somewhere where it can be easily found. A link at the bottom of your homepage will usually suffice.

So what are you waiting for… oh wait probably some examples or something right?

Well honestly my suggestion is if you are going to be serious about this online business of yours then you take this seriously and do what i did…. Let someone who knows what they are doing handle this for you. You will notice that on this blog and my membership sites that my privacy policy states a source at the bottom (http://www.internetlawcompliance.com/)… that is who i used and I highly recommend you do the same. Do NOT just copy and paste from another site cause not only may that not suite your needs, these are copyright protected as well.

Go to http://www.internetlawcompliance.com/ (not an affiliate link either.. cause this is a serious topic and I want you 100% trusting me on this to protect yourself. Not that you should not trust me but… ya i will just shut up now).

You may not feel you need one right now, but most people don’t realize they need a privacy policy until after there’s a problem. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, or, in this case, one simple little document and a link on the homepage can save your ass later.

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