I can guess what your reaction will be when I start talking about the need for a privacy policy on your website. It’s usually feigned attention and eye rolling. In fact, when I ask people point-blank why they don’t have one, I usually hear the exact same answer:
I don’t need one.
This is wrong. You need one for two reasons.
It’s the law to have a privacy policy
The first reason is by law a privacy policy is required if you collect information on a single California website visitor. So if you:
- make a sale to a California resident
- have a California resident visit your site and it is monitored by Google Analytics
- get an email from a California resident via your contact form
- add a California resident to your MailChimp newsletter list
You’ve collected personal information on a California resident. And because of that you need a privacy policy to explain what information you are collecting and what you do with it.
You’ve promised you have a privacy policy
The second reason you need a privacy policy is that you’ve made promises that you have one. When you:
- created your Google Analytics account, you promised them that you have a Privacy Policy
- chose PayPal to process payments, you promised them that you have a Privacy Policy
- enabled AdSense, you promised them that you included specific items in your Privacy Policy
- created an affiliate revenue stream with Amazon Associates
Even if we take the law and the promises you make out of the equation, having one is smart business practices.
Why you have a privacy policy
- what you know
- what you are doing with the information
It increases trust and transparency with your customers (and potential customers). And if you think that is a bad idea, we need to talk.
If I’ve convinced you to create a privacy policy, then I face my second hurdle in this conversation: the fear of legalese.
Writing a privacy policy
Yes, doing a Google search for “privacy policy template” will get you legalese-heavy documents. But they don’t have to be that way.
Just like you can write a contract without legalese, you can write a privacy policy without one.
All you need to do is go back to school and use the 5 W’s + 1 H. And write out:
- who is collecting the information
- what are you collecting
- when you share it
- where you use it
- how I find out what you know about me
- why are you collecting it
If you want to see what this can look like, here is mine.
