Last month, I discussed, from the website owner’s point of view, the critical importance of using Terms of Service (ToS) and Click Agreements suited to their business.
Now I will address the need for appropriate consideration of your website’s Privacy Policy.
What Type of Information Do Privacy Policies Protect?
Personally Identifiable Information (PII) may include many details such as name, address, email address, phone numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers and the like. From a technology standpoint, every visitor to every website provides some PII about who they are and where they came from. When a visitor lands on a website, this is what the website owner can access:
• the visitor’s unique IP (Internet Protocol) address;
• PII about the last website the visitor accessed; and
• information from cookies it left on the visitor’s hard drive from a previous visit to the site, perhaps including credit card information and passwords (usually encrypted).