Worthless Privacy Policies & TOS
Posted on : 31-12-2009 | By : Gary | In : Internet Marketing
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A privacy policy (or terms of service page) that doesn’t clearly name the individual or company that owns the site is 100% worthless. Think about it for a minute. The purpose of a privacy policy is to provide a statement from the site owner that details the information that the site owner may collect and the actions that the site owner may take with that information. If the site owner doesn’t clearly state who they are, and provide a point of contact then the privacy policy is with person or persons unknown.
There are only two reasons I can think of for omitting owner/company and contact details on a privacy policy. Either the site owner doesn’t really understand what a privacy policy is for, and has written something themselves, loosely based on other privacy policies they have seen or they simply don’t *want* you to know who they are. If they don’t want you to know who they are, that could just be a case of paranoia. In that case the site owner should at least get themselves a PO Box. If they just don’t want you to know who they are then that tends to ring the alarm bells with me.
Personally, I don’t do business any more with any site where the owner doesn’t want to identify themself. I think it’s unprofessional, not to mention that it is most likely illegal to provide what amounts to a false privacy policy. There are a number of free services that provide templates for privacy policies (try googling ‘free privacy policy’) , so there really isn’t any excuse for not having a valid policy on your site.








