A privacy policy is essentially a legal document or statement that discloses any or all of the means business obtains, utilizes, discloses, or shares client or customer information. This type of legal document is necessary in order to legally communicate with a customer on issues related to the business and its clients. It is also useful in informing the general public about the nature of the business and the services it provides.
Any time a website, business, or an individual contacts a webmaster or blogger and requests information about their site, the business is legally obligated to disclose, by law, what methods it uses to collect information about its customers. Most often, the disclosure must be in writing and can include various methods, including use of cookies, web beacons, search engine spiders, or any other methods. In addition, the disclosure must disclose whether or not the company collects anonymous data orstrokes in order to compile data on the web and to compile reports on the number of visitors to the site. If it does not require a consumer to sign up for a membership or opt-in, then it is probably not legally required to disclose such information. However, if a site collects anonymous data orstrokes, then the user should be made aware of such use and should also have the option of opting out of such collection.
The United States may adopt different laws than those in other countries. In the United States, federal law restricts many types of electronic and online privacy policy information. Some states, such as the state of California, do not have laws that restrict the use of electronic methods to collect user data. However, users need to be informed about the collection of such information. In some cases, the laws are so vague and can actually conflict with each other.
“Managed hosting” is when a website collects personal data on a user who has given permission for that data to be collected by another party. For example, social networking sites allow a third party to access a person’s account and gather email addresses and other personal data based on the settings that the user chooses. “Google Analytics” is an example of a managed host. Sites that use cookies or similar mechanisms to track user information collect this data through the “cookies” that are placed on the end-user’s computer. This type of collection can be considered a form of invasion of privacy. Therefore, the collection of personal data needs to be carefully regulated.
Examples of “cookies” are used on some versions of the Internet Explorer browser. A cookie is a small file that is stored in the computer memory and can track various types of information about the user. These include time spent on a site, what pages were visited and other activities. However, these “cookies” collect more than personal information about a user. They can also track messages and other items that are sent across the network, as well as providing statistics about the connection that a site is to another site.
Some Internet service providers use tracking cookies as part of their security and privacy policy models. These providers may monitor what web sites a user visits and which advertisements are displayed. Certain advertisements are only displayed on pages that have been approved by the provider. When cookies are used in combination with Internet Explorer, a different privacy policy and monitoring mechanism is created. This creates two sets of data: one set of data that is provided by the user’s privacy policy; and another set of data that is provided by the privacy policy and the Internet Explorer itself. This second set of data may have higher accuracy rates than the first set.
To illustrate the potential privacy issues of this scenario, consider two scenarios. In the first scenario, the personal information provided by the privacy policy is only limited to what the user actually sees on the screen. In the second scenario, the user is given permission to be able to track and log their own browsing activities. In both cases, the external stakeholders will be able to see the personal information. However, because of the structure of the privacy policy, the user is never given the ability to share that information with external stakeholders. This means that the only time that the external stakeholders can access such information is when they read the individual’s personal information provided in the privacy policy.
As an organization, you have an obligation to provide accurate, current and effective privacy policies and to collect all appropriate data associated with your use of E-mail and Internet Explorer. Without an effective privacy policy and the collection of appropriate data, the users of your services and applications are not properly protected from the risks associated with third party advertising, tracking, and analytics technologies. With these services and applications become more integral to the design of websites and services, organizations need to take a holistic approach to collecting appropriate data and using it in a responsible way. A comprehensive privacy policy can provide important information related to the appropriate and the scope of the use of tracking cookies and other external collecting technologies on the website. It can also provide guidance as to how organizations can protect the private information of its users.