Creating a Privacy Policy Part IV

Creating a Privacy Policy Continues..

Let’s take a look at 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.

Today we will discuss calling out disclosure and sharing of collected information.

One of the main reasons to create a privacy policy and to make it public is the individual’s right to know.  As you can see in my International or USA Privacy Laws pages depending on your jurisdiction, the individual’s right to know what you may collect about them may be a legal requirement.  In other places, this right may be more under your discretion, but I would still suggest taking an open approach.   I would caution you, however, by the following two rules:

Ariel’s Privacy Rule #4:  If you disclose what you collect, make sure you disclose everything.

While this might not seem important, I find that in a litigious society, such as ours, a collection of data that does not report every item may encourage such litigation.

And, my next rule, and for a similar reason:

Ariel’s Privacy Rule #5:  If you disclose what you do with the data collected, make sure you disclose every single possibility.

So let us add to our emerging policy and let it read now:

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.

There.  We are almost done with our Privacy Policy.   In the next and final article in this series we will close by discussing updates to our privacy policies.

See you soon!

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