Data protection is everybody’s business, and over the last few years, many laws have been put into place to protect data from being stolen. When you open your website, your privacy policy will be one of the first pages you publish, even before the blog posts or product reviews. It’s a critical piece of content because it involves legal obligations to protect the personal data of your users, who will hopefully go on to become your customers. The wording of the policy needs to be super clear and easy to read, but also precise enough to satisfy the different laws in countries all over the world. It’s also crucial to build trust.
Wealthy Affiliate gets its members started with a standardized template for member websites. It already covers a lot, and we adapt it to fit our specific websites. Click here to see mine, and remember that the link is also in the website footer whenever you want to see it again.
Image produced with the Wealthy Affiliate Image Studio AI tool
What is a Privacy Policy and Why Does It Matter?
A privacy policy tells users what personal information is collected, how it is used, what rights they have regarding that information, and how to interact with the website managers to exercise their rights. Visitors expect to see a privacy policy if they’re asked to provide personal data during any kind of interaction, whether it be a simple contact form, a sign-up page for a newsletter, or a checkout page after making a purchase.
Laws like the GDPR (Europe), CCPA/CPRA (California), PIPEDA (Canada), LGPD (Brazil), and PDPA (Asia Pacific) all have specific requirements. Not following them can lead to heavy statutory fines even if no crime was committed. When I lived in Italy, sometimes I couldn’t see US websites because they didn’t comply with GDPR, and the website owners were not taking any chances.
While researching this article, I discovered that wome laws appear to be enforceable when the business reaches a threshold of either users or revenue, and sometimes they can go into effect if the business makes money from the information that they collect. The crucial thing to remember is that compliance is mandatory, so it’s best to be informed. For more information, I’ll link to a post on the subject.
The Wealthy Affiliate template is very simple and tailored to affiliate marketing websites, which usually don’t handle direct sales. It informs users that the website does not sell, rent, or trade email addresses, but that cookies are set and accessed. There is no cookie consent form incorporated. The website owner needs to install a plug-in.
This is one reason why it is helpful to join Wealthy Affiliate: members get help with all sorts of questions, from how to install a plug-in to which one to use. Recently, a WA member wrote a post about adding a cookie consent form that complies with European regulations. This is another benefit of belonging to Wealthy Affiliate: each member can contribute and help others who might be in similar situations. (click here to read that article here on the WA website).
If website owners don’t want to use the WA template, they can start with a privacy policy generator, such as Termly or TermsFeed (both have free accounts). Periodic reviews and updates will be necessary, especially when the business starts growing – like we know it will!
In conclusion
We need to know how to protect ourselves online because there are some bad actors on the internet. So, do you check the privacy policies of the websites you visit? Do you accept all cookies when asked your preferences? How do you want websites to handle your personal data?
I’d love to hear your thoughts about privacy policies.