Exercising the right to privacy is extremely important even for online shoppers and subscribers. This means that any information that he submits on your site should be made private and should not be shared to anyone or any other company. Now, it is your company or website's duty to make sure that this is properly observed. And this can be done through coming up and implementing the website's privacy policy.
What is a privacy policy? It is actually a legal statement that provides information on how a company or website will gather, utilize, handle and disclose any personal data that your users will submit online. This is a must, especially if you are managing a website that gathers delicate and sensitive personal information. Such websites are online shopping, payment transfer, electronic mail and even social networking sites. Since these websites gather credit card information, physical address, social security numbers, date of birth and phone numbers, it is important for you to have a set privacy policy for your consumers.
Should you hire experts to do this? Of course! Not only will you get to cover everything there is to include in your policy, you can also learn more and understand the ins and outs of how to take care of your loyal customers' personal data.
There are at least 5 points that you need to cover when drafting your website's privacy policy. Be sure to discuss this with your "policy makers" in order to prevent any loopholes in your guidelines.
Declare the information that you will collect
It is important to let your customers know the type of information that you will collect from them. May it be their email address, their date of birth, their physical address or their Social Security Number; your users have the right to know everything that you will gather in order to provide service. Let them know that you will be asking information directly from them and from other sources with their consent.
Declare the reasons why you need the information
Customers will not willingly give up sensitive information about themselves unless they know the reasons why you need such data. For example, you are hosting or managing a website that caters to providing electronic mail services, let them know that you will ask for the customer's contact information and date of birth. You also have to explain that these details are essential to make sure that that he can take advantage of your complete services.
Declare the options you offer when it comes to collecting information
Customers would always look for certain choices especially when providing sensitive personal information on websites. Give them options with regard to the amount or the kind of information they may provide, as well as the power to edit and delete data on their accounts and they will surely appreciate that!
Declare the information that you will share
Advise your clients that you will not share private and personal information to other companies, domains and even your affiliates, unless they give you permission to do so. And in case your users ask, be sure to have your bases covered by including the possible reasons for sharing data to other companies on your privacy policy: (1) with your consent – such as you signing up with affiliated websites or services, (2) legal reasons – in case security has been breached, rights have been violated, or the safety of a person or the general public has become a major concern, (3) with those who are tasked to manage the website's domain - which is all about account deletion, termination, changing your password and allowing the users to change or alter specific personal settings and profiles.
Declare how you will protect their information
It is important to provide the ways on how you will make sure that their personal information are in good hands. Let them know the kinds of programs, software and applications that you will use to encrypt sensitive information. Here are a few ways to protect data: (1) using specific services to encrypt or secure data. (2) explaining your verification processes (3) the process that you observe when reviewing information submitted on the website (4) security measures to prevent hackers from getting into the system (5) and the level of restrictions given to those who may or may not have access to their accounts.
