Calm Your Visitors’ Privacy Jitters

2008 October 1

tags: privacy policy, terms and conditions, website basics

by Urbain

I have a friend who gets totally freaked out from all the conspiracy theories, news of “earth changes” and political commentary posted on the web. He believes this stuff, thinking that all information online is honest and trustworthy. But he refuses to sign up for services such as Paypal and certainly won’t buy anything online because he doesn’t trust the Internet.

Does this sound like an oxymoron?

WebProNews published a report that was not all that surprising: The majority of Americans are worried about what happens with their financial and other private data on the Internet. Passively reading scary stuff online is one thing, but handing over personal data is another. Then again, the most dedicated of conspiracy theorists might take their concerns a step further.

According to the article, major worries of the typical American surfer include:

Concerns that credit card numbers will be stolen online
Online activities are being tracked and monitored
Internet companies should always ask permission before using personal data, but they don’t
There should be an opt-out option from having activities tracked

For the exact statistics, read “Americans Anxious Over Online Privacy,” by Mike Sachoff.

Given these concerns, it is important that you publish privacy policies and other disclosures on your blog or website. Particularly if you are collecting financial data, it is imperative that you provide a solid privacy policy and terms page. If you are selling products or services online, you should also give your contact information so that your potential buyer is not worried about sending money to a scam artist.

Disclosures for Bloggers

DisclosurePolicy.org is a free online service created especially for bloggers. You are asked a series of questions about your blog, such as whether you are paid to write opinions for the products you recommend, and based on your answers, the online software will generate a disclosure policy that you can copy and paste directly into your blog. The disclosure generated by DisclosurePolicy.org chiefly involves your relationship, as a blogger, with companies that you promote. For this reason, you should supplement your disclosure with a privacy page that addresses your visitors’ concerns about whether their information is tracked or what is done with their subscriptions or other user-provided data.

Privacy and Policy Statements for Ecommerce and Other Sites

Regardless of whether you operate a blog, have an article site, or operate an ecommerce site in which you collect credit card information, it is important to have a good privacy policy page to address concerns about use of private data and a terms page that answers questions about shipping policies, returns and so forth.

You might want to hire a lawyer to write your privacy policy and other terms. If you need a lawyer, LegalMatch is free and confidential, and allows you to respond to screened and pre-qualified lawyers. If this is not palatable, then another option is to take a look at the Internet Law Compliance program that was created by attorney Shawn Casey. This program addresses COPA issues and other matters that you might find in a free privacy policy generator.