A website privacy policy basically reflects its information policies. Every website whether it sells a product, service or information collects information about visitors to its website. This information may be used in several ways and it is important that the visitors to the website know this. The privacy policy of a website is important because people often provide Personally Identifiable Information that pertains to crucial information about them. This may include the names, addresses, and contact numbers of the visitors. It may also include information on the transactions made on the website and web pages that were visited. Lets look at the Wikipedia definition of a Privacy Policy,
“A privacy policy is a legal document that is dealing with the information related to customers’ and merchants’ private profiles. Such examples could be the instance of a website providing information about the use of personal information - particularly personal information collected via the website - by the website owner. Privacy policies usually contain details of what personal information is collected, how the personal information may be used, the persons to whom the personal information may be disclosed, the security measures taken to protect the personal information, and whether the website uses cookies and/or web bugs.”
A website privacy policy is especially important today, in a day and age, where identity theft is rampant as is the misuse of the personal information provided to a company or business. If nothing else it is irritating to see your mail box full of spam from businesses who have gained access to your Personally Identified Information.
Taking these facts into consideration California laws now require any website and online service to that requests Personally Identified Information from its residents to clearly post the website's privacy policy on its homepage. The California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003 which became effective on July 1, 2004 is the first state law in the nation to require owners of commercial websites or online services to post a privacy policy. Although COPPA is only a California state law, it has essentially become a de facto federal law.
It may be confusing for website owners and administrators to decide what information needs to be included in the privacy policy. You could choose to have a look at a sample privacy policy available online and use a privacy policy generator to create one of your own. A website privacy policy generator is software that provides your website a set of questions about its information policies and uses the responses to create a privacy policy. All your webmaster or administrator needs to do is provide information that pertains to the collection, use, storage and handling of personal private information and accordingly creates a privacy policy. The privacy policy needs to be updated often to provide your customers the latest information. Find a Website Privacy Policy Template or Generator to help you build your policy today!