If you are a WordPress fan like me, I am sure you will have your own reasons. But the reason I used WordPress is the huge number of plugins to ease so many of my tasks. The great article WordPress plugins you can’t run a successful WP powered website without a real time saver for thousands of WordPress users.
But what I wasn’t aware of was the necessity to include a privacy policy on my site. Even if it’s a simple blog, which merely collects subscriber email addresses for a monthly newsletter, it’s necessary to let users know what information is being gathered by them, who will have access to the information and how it would be used. To quench these uncertainties, a privacy policy is essential.
Most users blindly trust the websites they visit, when it comes to protecting their personal information, mailing address, email address, personal preferences or billing information. In spite of their lack of seriousness, users still expect some confirmation in writing, regarding their details being protected. Even though most users are reluctant, when it comes to reading a privacy policy thoroughly, they feel more secure knowing that one is in place in case they feel like referring it.
Need of a privacy policy
Be it a business website or a blog; all should include some privacy policy specifying what they do to preserve the information they gather from customers, visitors, and users. A privacy policy is not merely meant for legal obligations, but it aids to build transparency and trust with clients and readers. If website owners and bloggers don’t collect any user information, they too should include a standard privacy policy for sites. After all, this is the only way of informing the visitors that these sites are saving none of their personal information.
How to create a privacy policy
Only copy pasting a policy from another website is not good practice, as it won’t cover all of the bases for a website. As the sole purpose of the privacy policy is to inform and protect a customer, the best practice is to ensure that it is well crafted, readable, easily understandable & accurate. A well-crafted policy should encompass the following points.
- A brief introduction to the business or blog, and the purpose the website serves.
- User information collected, along with the information that will be logged by the website servers, such as hostnames & IP addresses.
- Collection method incorporated, i.e. automated collection or via form filling.
- A detail description mentioning how the user details are stored on the company servers, cloud, or overseas.
- Whether or not the user detail is being shared with a third party.
- Contact information, so that anyone with any query regarding privacy policy can communicate with the concerned authority.
Sounds complicated, isn’t it?
To dodge the pain of creating a customized privacy policy, website owners can always resort to free plugins that can generate a privacy policy in minutes. That is the power of WordPress.
Generate privacy policy With WordPress Plugins
1. oik-privacy-policy
Every website should have a privacy policy. The privacy policy should define how your site uses cookies. This plugin will help you create your policy page, and attach it to a menu of your choice. Choose the sections you require and tailor them for your company’s information. The sample text uses shortcodes to reduce the amount of editing you need to do.
2. WP Accept to Register Terms of Service & P. Policy
WordPress Accept to Register allows you to require your visitors to accept terms&conditions and privacy policy to Register. This will give you confidence visitor agrees with your website terms&conditions when he or she registers. Accepting Privacy Policy is required in many countries (including the whole European Union) or by Google when using some of their products.
3. I Agree
Automatically add the “I Agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy” statement to the WordPress Default/Custom Registration Page/Comment Box using this Plugin. Also, I Agree for Registration/Comment works independently of each other i.e. you can enable/disable I Agree for Registration/Comment.