Creating a Privacy Policy

Online privacy is currently a hot topic—especially with social media sites like Facebook collecting large amounts of data about members, and far-reaching web companies like Google bridging the gap between personal services (like Gmail) and advertising (like AdSense). 

 While your small business website may not pose the same level of risk, it is still important to have a privacy policy if you sell online or even if you just collect customer information online such as via an inquiry form or a newsletter sign-up.  In fact, studies have shown that having a prominent privacy policy link can increase form submissions for just about any online offering.  And, some states like California actually require it.

If you don’t have a privacy policy already, creating one is easy.  Use one of the two policy generators linked below, then paste the output into a webpage (use the word “privacy” as part of the file name), and link to it from your site header or footer, and place a link to it next to any form “submit” button.

• OECD Privacy Statement Generator
  This generator is provided by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and is designed to meet global requirements for privacy policies.  It is available in English, Spanish and French.  The generator walks you through a lengthy questionnaire to obtain the data necessary to create your policy.  When you’re done, you can download a html version that you can further customize and add to your website.  You can also log-in to revise or re-download the policy.  Begin the English version here.

• Free Privacy Policy.com
  This generator is less comprehensive than the OECD generator, but is geared towards a United States audience.  It also includes all privacy policy components required by California law.  You can use it to create one free policy per email address, and you’re required to provide your email address in order to download your policy.  Note that once you complete the questionnaire you’ll be asked to donate money and to buy additional services.  Just keep clicking “no thanks” to get your free customized policy download.