What is a privacy policy?
A privacy policy is a document that states what personal data you collect from your users, why, and how you keep it private.
The purpose of the privacy policy is to inform your users about how their data is being handled.
Hence, the privacy policy should be accessible for your users and kept in plain and readable language.
Most countries have privacy laws requiring that websites collecting personal data have a proper privacy policy in place.
Failure to comply can result in heavy fines and even prosecution. Are you based in the EU or providing services to EU citizens, you must have a GDPR compliant privacy policy on your domain.
We will get into this in more detail below.
Personal data is information that can identify an individual, either directly or when combined with other data.
Names, e-mails, addresses, localization, IP addresses, photos, and account information all are directly identifying data.
Health information, income, religion, and cultural profiles, and the like is also personal data.
Furthermore, and crucial in the present context, data on user behavior is also personal. Cookies can track and register individual users’ browsing activities, like what articles they scroll past and which ones they choose to click on.
