This week we are going to cover how to create the perfect privacy policy for your Web site. Privacy policies can cover various portions of your Web site, whether you are an online merchant or even a publication. A privacy policy can cover your tracks for any legal issues that may arise in the future.
There are various resources available on the Internet right now for creating that perfect privacy policy. But which ones are beneficial and actually worthwhile to use? You want to look for Web sites that cover the information you are looking for. Privacy policies can be quite large, but try and keep them simple and to-the-point. Larger privacy policies often are used for merchants, since they hold information about credit cards, transactions, and cookie preferences in their databases. You might be thinking that cookies are not important for a privacy policy, but for merchants they’re a very big issue. Many Web site “loopholes” (mainly in Internet Explorer) exploit these cookies, which could possibly put credit card information into the wrong hands. Web sites that do these types of transactions usually are smart enough to choose various coding methods to decrease the amount of exploits possible by adding more security to their encryptions and much more. But this type of information and possibilities are the exact thing that you must think about while creating your privacy policy. Think to yourself, what dangers do I have to my readers/clients? What could possibly go wrong with what I am delivering to my readers? You have to think about everything you do, and make sure it is covered in your privacy policy.

If you’re a Web site that sells e-mail subscribers’ addresses, I think you’re doing something completely wrong. But these types of companies usually have these issues covered in their privacy policies. So if you are a user, be sure to read those privacy policies to find out whether the Web site you are visiting is selling your information to spam companies. So the privacy policy is not only beneficial to the company, but also to the user.

So what are some good ways to cover your tracks and ensure that your readers don’t complain to you in the future? Write some explanations in your privacy policy, and remember that a privacy policy doesn’t have to be a legal document. You CAN just be informing your readers about what you do with your content. One perfect example of covering all portions of your privacy policy is to link to other privacy policies. Since Google often keeps a cache of some information and stores forms of information (mainly written content) in databases, it is a very good idea to link to Google’s privacy policy. This informs your reader that it is not your fault if Google has cached information that a reader might want you to remove. Therefore removing previously published material from your Web site is useless and can be considered unethical. While there are ways of deleting all tracks from Google, it is beside the point. What you have on your Web site is what you chose to write about. If you don’t want to remove it, you don’t have to. That is the exact reason why you would want to put these issues in your privacy policy. We recommend linking to Google’s privacy policy, but we do not condone blaming Google for any issue you have with your site. Not only is that a very dumb idea, but an unethical idea in general. Make friends, not war (especially when it comes to legal document battles).

You have thought of all the subjects you want to put into your privacy policy and you wrote them all out in great detail. How should you format the portions of the document to hold up in a legal form? Well the best thing to do is EXPLAIN YOUR PORTIONS IN GREAT DETAIL. Let your users know exactly what happens and what is going to happen if they try to make a change to your Web site covered in your privacy policy. While a privacy policy is most times only beneficial to large Web sites, to be on the safe side some bloggers might decide to take this route as well. We have listed out a few privacy policy generators that will give you a good example of how you should phrase and organize the document. With some easy modifications, you can add portions to the document covering the issues you might find troublesome. Remember to brainstorm about your Web site and think far in advance about issues that may arise. The date and time that you post your privacy policy could determine whether or not you win or loose in court (if that were to ever happen, which we hope it does not).

A privacy policy is very different from a copyright policy. If you are unsure of the difference, feel free to ask us.

Resources: Google Privacy Policy , Privacy Policy Generator