Does My Business Truly Warrant an Online Privacy Policy?
I get asked a lot about whetheror not a selected internet site wishes aweb privacy policy or not. My answer to all those different websites is the same : for the love of little puppies, yes. Regardless of what your subject material or nature of your site, whatever if you’re trying to Make Money Online or not, you need to have a privacy policy.
NOTE : Now before I am getting into this any further I must make one thing VERY CLEAR it’s not that I am A counsel and so don’t take anything I post here as legal advice. You are on your own there so if you’re not sure then check with a counsel.
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 unready for the sudden.
An internet privacy policy states the conditions under which your internet site handles the personal information that it obtains from anyone who visits your site. What that suggests for you is that, because you had a posted policy, nobody can come to you after visiting your website and protest 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 internet site isnt hosted in a state or country which has any laws that protect shopper privacy on the internet. But youre not really 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 didnt disclose that it would occur in your privacy policy, then you might be liable.
Yes, I know, what are the chances of that occuring to your website, but you never know. And overtly, 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 in place , you need to get one now. While you’ll be able to find lots of different examples of privacy policies from all over the internet, do not just copy one from another site and paste in your company name over theirs. You need to be sure that you privacy policy covers you for precisely how you use the information of the users who come to your site.
Heres what your privacy policy wishes 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.
- An explanation of what kind of information you collect from people who visit your site.
- Your contact information so people can contact you if they have any questions about the privacy policy.
Continue reading the remainder of Online Privacy Policy…
Article Courtesy of:
Steve Pohlit
Business Consulting, Executive Coach
Turnaround/Crisis Management
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New Digital Media, Inc.
727-587-7871
About: Steve Pohlit is a CPA,MBA and has been the CFO of several major domestic and international companies. Steve is a business owner and an expert business consultant focused on building profits and net asset value. He is very experienced with Internet marketing and social media marketing. All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.
