Writing a Privacy Policy

We sometimes get asked to write a privacy policy. This post will cover why a privacy policy is important, how to write one and list some online resources to make the task easier.

1. Why a Privacy Policy is important

Here are three reasons why a privacy policy on your website is important:

a. INCREASED REVENUE POTENTIAL - Some people won’t give you any personal information or buy products and services from you if you do not have a stated privacy policy on your website.

b. BENEFITS THE COMMON WEAL - The organizations that adopt a privacy policy, the more the cyber-anarchists are marginalized. A privacy policy is real - if you have one on your website, you can’t tell a judge “you didn’t know.”

c. IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO - Nobody likes spam, snooping, phishing or trafficking in personal information.

2. How to write a Privacy Policy

We only have one piece of advice about writing a privacy policy:

Write in plain English

This will not make the lawyers happy, but a privacy policy is meaningless if it’s written in legalese. The concept of a privacy policy is to protect the rights of the viewer. Stuff in legalese seems to protect the rights of the website owners. It kind of defeats the purpose.

State your principles in broad terms. Keep it short. If the attorneys are really crawling up your kilt, include a link to a downloadable pdf that lists the “full privacy policy.”

3. Privacy Policy Generator and other resources

If you search for “privacy policy,” you’ll see a lot of links to companies that sell cyber-encryption programs and secure email software, etc. The best site that we found which addressed the needs of online copywriters in crafting privacy policies was at the Direct Marketing Association.

The DMA’s free online Privacy Policy Generator lets you enter some data and check off a few boxes to create an html web page for you to view or email to yourself. You can edit the text and post it on your website.

For more info on privacy issues, follow these links:

CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

Wikipedia: Privacy policy

BBB online Sample Privacy Notice