If your business comes with a web page that collects and uses visitors’ personal data, then there should be a link to your company's privacy policy. Your company can be fined for violating numerous privacy legislations if you collect data without any privacy regulation.
What Is the Importance of Privacy Policy?
Privacy policies are necessary for complying with various privacy laws. They also assist in managing expectations with the visitors of your website.
The new privacy legislation, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), emphasizes the need to give customers control over their data. Therefore, it’s more vitally important than ever.
By informing visitors how you protect their data—mainly if your business accepts online payments—you increase their confidence to purchase your services or products without fretting that their data will be abused.
What Should Be in Privacy Policies?
You have the flexibility of drafting a privacy policy from scratch. Should you opt for this route, the followings are some of the most essentials topics to include in your website data protection provisions.
Accessible Privacy Policies
You may have the best privacy regulations in place. However, it will be ineffective if your customers are incapable of finding it.
Therefore, ensure that your website visitors can get easy access to your provisions on data protection. Also, please encourage them to thoroughly read it before agreeing to utilize the service or product you offer.
Users will trust you and your company more if your privacy policies are easy to read and placed in a convenient location, such as in the website footer. The link to the privacy regulation should also be visible on every page of your website or app.
Posting your privacy policy in such a prominent location can also enhance the accountability of your company.
Information About Your Company
The next essential item to include in a privacy regulation is detailed information about you and your business. Your website visitors will be more confident in purchasing your products or working with your company by providing such details.
It’s like an “About Us” page but written in a slightly different way. You may include the name of your company founders, but make it brief. If you want to go into detail about this point, consider adding it to your "About Us" page instead.
To make your website users more convinced of the data protection your company provides, try to mention how much your company values their privacy. In addition to this, add the contact details of your company to your privacy policy.
Customers will benefit from such a degree of transparency. Giving them a simple means to ask further inquiries about your business will show that your organization is sincere about data security.
Clearly State What Data You Collect
Before drafting privacy regulations, list all the information your company will collect from your website visitors. Please provide a clear statement regarding the data collected so that users have the flexibility to opt or not to opt for providing their details.
The information collected includes actively and willingly submitted by the users when registering to utilize your services. It also covers information that is automatically collected from them, such as the ones from cookies.
You can specify how the information will be classified, such as personal, private, or public information. It provides the user assistance in understanding the meaning of those terms stated in the privacy policy document.
Furthermore, specify what kind of personal information your website is collected. Common examples include first and last name, mailing address, email, phone number, and the likes if your website will contain users' photos, state that in the privacy regulation.
How the Information Will Be Used
One of the primary purposes of creating privacy policies is to inform visitors regarding how the information collected by the company is utilized.
For instance, if it's an e-commerce company, the website will generally collect some general details. These include the name and the address of the customer. Such data typically will be utilized for delivery operations.
It's also not uncommon for the data to be used for marketing purposes. Whether your company uses the existing information to customize promotions or recommend products to your predetermined target market, be sure to maintain transparency to make your customers feel at ease.
Adding a statement like "We may use your existing information to present you with special offers" can significantly.
Finally, your website privacy regulation should provide reminders to the users to protect the personal details they provide on the webpage. These may include their usernames, passwords, locations, email, and so on.
That way, any third parties will have no access to their accounts. If you state in your privacy policy document that your website allows users to connect with other users or view others' usernames or information, be sure to remind them not to share any private information.
References:
- https://segment.com/resources/data-privacy/why-your-company-needs-a-data-privacy-policy/
-https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-to-include-in-your-website-s-privacy-policy.html
- https://www.wix.com/blog/2020/08/how-to-write-website-privacy-policy/
-https://www.privacypolicies.com/blog/privacy-policy-template/#How_The_Information_Is_Used
-https://www.privacypolicies.com/blog/how-write-privacy-policy/#Methods_Of_Collection_And_Data_Usage
