Does my website really need a privacy policy?

First to clearly state: iSeek / Seek Internet Solutions Ltd are not legal experts nor data privacy experts and we have compiled the information below from reading industry news and using our experience as web developers. We make no guarantee that this information will ensure your compliance with any regulations.

At iSeek we are often asked by customers during a website development –
Does my website really need a privacy policy?

The answer is likely yes, you really do.

It is too easy for a business owner to overlooked (or completely forgotten) or leave a privacy policy terribly outdated. But with so many new data privacy regulations cropping up, skipping out on a privacy policy is a high risk and companies are getting fined or into serious legal troubles.

Here are a few examples of regulations that require a privacy policy:

  1. California Online Privacy Protection Act
  2. Privacy Shield
  3. EU General Data Protection Regulation (effective May 2018)
  4. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule

Regulations around privacy policies don’t just end at your website: any tool that collects information from your site — such as website analytics, online forms, or chat widgets — will require a policy too. Google Analytics, the most popular web analytics tool has a privacy policy requirement in its terms of use.

And if you’re planning on running any online ad campaigns, both Google and Facebook require privacy policies in place if you’re collecting any user information. This is especially important for Facebook Lead Ads, which require a privacy policy URL link within each ad you create.

And the above is just to cover data privacy for your businesses online activities, most businesses should expend the policy as well to how their business manages their customers data company wide to help better protect themselves.

There are many ways to generate a privacy policy and below are some useful articles to give you a broad overview:

There are also many websites that will help you generate such a policy such as https://getterms.io/ but we advise that these are really only useful for very basic circumstances and often it is too easy to make a mistake or leave essential parts out using such services in our opinion

Also the most common way people generate their privacy policy is to see what their competitors write on theirs and copy the parts they feel are most suitable for them but again this is a very high risk option and without legal advise it can leave your business vulnerable to a fine or legal expenses