Creating a Privacy Policy Part V

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Hello and thank you for reading this final installment in the How to Create a Privacy Policy series of mine.

Here is what we accomplished so far:

Sample Privacy Policy

 

Purpose:  To define privacy expectations of visitors to the ArielSilverstone.com website.

What We Collect and How

We respect the privacy of our visitors.   We generally do not collect personally-identifying information on this website.   We do, however:

a) Employ certain automated tools that collect statistical information visitors to our site.

b) Provide you with the option to leave comments, or contact us, by entering your email address and, optionally, other contact information as you may choose to share with us.

c) From time to time, we may offer you to opportunity to participate in surveys or polls, and we may be provided with such information as you choose to provide us.

Cookies

In general, we do not use persistent cookies, unless you request that our site remember you.   Other cookies that we use are session based and expire or set to be deleted when you close your browser window or restart your computer.  Our cookies are not made to be read by other sites, and maybe refused by setting your browser options to do so.  Refusing some cookies may alter your site experience, and especially movement between pages that require authentication.  We do not use the values stored in cookies for any other purpose beyond those declared above, in the What we collect section.

How Do We Use Information We Collect

We use the privacy-related information we collect solely to deliver the services referenced on the website.  We do not currently, nor do we have plans to, sell or license any of the collected information to any other party, in any form.  From time to time we may evaluate items such as reach, content, theme and language and use statistical information to improve on our content.   We may also use collected privacy-related information to communicate with you, in sole relation to the services provided on and referenced by this website.

The sole exceptions to our policy are if we are ordered by a court of competent jurisdiction, or related law enforcement agency, to reveal such information; or to prevent what, in our sole good-faith discretion, might constitute a credible threat to your life or health or to the life or health of others.

Today, we will end the series by discussing updates to our privacy policies.  I postulate the following rule:

Ariel’s Privacy Rule #6: Decide IF you want to give a “heads-up” before changing your policy and, if so, how you going to achieve that and stick to it.

Currently, very few rules demand prior-notification to your visitors about changes to your privacy policy.  It is also true that policies ought to be revisited, reviewed, and adjusted from time to time.   That said, it would be “wrong” if, for example, we promised our readers to email them before change and then we did not follow through.  I have seen quite a few site that had a “we shall let you know if you only register” policy, only to replace it, post-change, with “come visit us and we will show you” that the privacy policy was changed.   Besides being wrong, it might also put you in hot water legally.

I therefore suggest the (Again, simplest) manner of announcing privacy policy change:

Changes to our privacy policy

From time to time we may change our privacy policy.   The best way to find out about such changes is to visit our site and look at this policy again.  We date our policies, so you can easily ascertain when it was last changed.

And that’s it.  We do not ask people to register, deal with email or “snail mail”, and offer an easy way to our visitors to b informed.  So here is the entire policy:

Sample Privacy Policy

(current as of September 22, 2009)

Purpose:  To define privacy expectations of visitors to the ArielSilverstone.com website.

What We Collect and How

We respect the privacy of our visitors.   We generally do not collect personally-identifying information on this website.   We do, however:

a) Employ certain automated tools that collect statistical information visitors to our site.

b) Provide you with the option to leave comments, or contact us, by entering your email address and, optionally, other contact information as you may choose to share with us.

c) From time to time, we may offer you to opportunity to participate in surveys or polls, and we may be provided with such information as you choose to provide us.

Cookies

In general, we do not use persistent cookies, unless you request that our site remember you.   Other cookies that we use are session based and expire or set to be deleted when you close your browser window or restart your computer.  Our cookies are not made to be read by other sites, and maybe refused by setting your browser options to do so.  Refusing some cookies may alter your site experience, and especially movement between pages that require authentication.  We do not use the values stored in cookies for any other purpose beyond those declared above, in the What we collect section.

How Do We Use Information We Collect

We use the privacy-related information we collect solely to deliver the services referenced on the website.  We do not currently, nor do we have plans to, sell or license any of the collected information to any other party, in any form.  From time to time we may evaluate items such as reach, content, theme and language and use statistical information to improve on our content.   We may also use collected privacy-related information to communicate with you, in sole relation to the services provided on and referenced by this website.

The sole exceptions to our policy are if we are ordered by a court of competent jurisdiction, or related law enforcement agency, to reveal such information; or to prevent what, in our sole good-faith discretion, might constitute a credible threat to your life or health or to the life or health of others.

Changes to our privacy policy

From time to time we may change our privacy policy.   The best way to find out about such changes is to visit our site and look at this policy again.  We date our policies, so you can easily ascertain when it was last changed.

The final step is, of course, to post it!

Thanks for reading!

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