An Overview of Privacy Policies
Many websites collect data from their audiences. This information can serve marketing purposes such as targeted ads. In general, many WordPress sites collect information about:
- Age, sex, and location
- Email addresses and phone numbers
- Any user behavior data gathered through tracking tools such as Google Analytics
- Comments
- Contact information from entry forms
- Data collected from security tools and plugins
A privacy policy is a document that explains to users how their data is used. Most websites have one in their footer or navigation menu:
Adding a Privacy Policy is a must for every website nowadays. If you are a blogger, business owner, or freelancer, it is recommended that you must add a privacy policy on your website.
If you are still not clear what exactly a Privacy Policy is and why it is necessary for your website, then this guide is for you. At the end of this guide, you will learn different ways to create a privacy policy and will be able to add a privacy policy on your WordPress website.
What is a Privacy Policy?
“A privacy policy is a statement or a legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses, and manages a customer or client’s data. It fulfills a legal requirement to protect a customer or client’s privacy.”-Wikipedia
Every website collects some sort of data from its users in different ways. According to the law in many countries, websites are required to disclose the information they collect about their visitors, and how this information is used.
Below are some of the ways in which WordPress website gathers user information:
- Comment forms: Collecting the user’s name and email address through comment forms.
- Google Analytics: Using Google Analytics to track user behavior and traffic source.
- Contact forms: Collecting user details through your website’s contact form.
- Advertisement: If you are allowing third-party website advertisements using Google Adsense, Facebook Pixels or other ad-platforms tracking code.
- Subscriber list: Collecting user details to add them to your email subscription list.
In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that around 79 percent of Americans believe that companies won’t take responsibility if they misuse personal information. Furthermore, 62 percent of people think that both companies and the government collect personal data about them daily.
With privacy becoming an increasing concern, having a disclosure that explains how you use visitor information can help you build a trustworthy site.
Rules and regulations about privacy policies can differ by country. However, in general, if your site collects personal information about your visitors, you need to have a disclosure.
If you are using any of these ways to collect information about your user, it goes without saying that you need to have a privacy policy page published on your website.
Do I need a privacy policy on my WordPress website?
Having a privacy policy page on your website will protect your business from legal issues and also helps foster user trust. Apart from this, you will need a privacy policy for the following reasons:
- Helps in SEO: Google and other search engines love to rank sites with high authority. A privacy policy is one way to build trust with search engines.
- Running online advertisements: If you want to run online advertisements on platforms like Google Adsense or Facebook Ads you will require a privacy policy of your website.
- Adherence to the law: Government agencies like FTC (Federal Trade Commission) require you to have a privacy policy for your website.
Also, to comply with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) you will need to have a privacy policy on your website.
What is the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)?
“The General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individual citizens of the European Union and the European Economic Area. It also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas.”- Wikipedia
This law is applicable to every website even if you are not from the EU countries.
Why It’s Important to Have a Privacy Policy
A privacy policy is required by law for businesses, freelancers, and bloggers. Anyone who collects information from WordPress site visitors needs to have one.
For example, you need a privacy policy page to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is a European Union (EU) law that protects the data and privacy of internet users within the EU economic area:
What should you write in the privacy policy?
Usually, your privacy policy page should include all the ways you collect or intend to collect user information on your website.
You should write the following information in your Privacy Policy page:
- The details about the data you collect from users visiting your website.
- Explain to users how you collect their information. For example, it could be through web beacons, site logs, cookies, signup forms, comment forms, etc.
- If you use any third-party ad networks like Google Adsense, mention them all.
- Explain your intent to collect user data. This could be for optimizing your website, improving user experience, and customizing your web page content based on visitors’ browser type and/or other information.
- Explain how users can opt out of these cookies and include links to opt-out pages on your site and third-party advertiser websites.
- Tell your users how they should contact you if they have additional questions or require more information about your Privacy Policy.
There are many ways to add a Privacy Policy in your WordPress website. You can find dozens of websites or WordPress plugins on the internet that can help you to generate your privacy policy page easily.
3 Easy Ways To Create A Privacy Policy
In this guide, we will discuss three easy ways to generate a Privacy Policy page for your WordPress website.
First method:
Using WordPress Inbuilt Privacy Policy
If you have a simple blog or basic e-commerce, a standard policy page would suffice. To help the community, the latest WordPress now comes with an inbuilt Privacy Policy using which you can easily create a privacy policy page for your WordPress website. If you have not updated your WordPress yet, we recommend you to update it soon.
To add a Privacy Policy using the WordPress default privacy policy generator, follow the below steps:
- From your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings > Privacy
You’ll find that WordPress has already drafted a privacy policy page for your website. You can click on the “Use This Page” button or “Create New Page” button to use this drafted page as your Privacy policy page or you can create a new one respectively.
If you want to edit the default draft or want to make some changes to it, you need to click on the “Edit” button to do so (refer below picture)
Now, let’s add your Privacy Policy page link in WordPress. You can add a link to your Privacy Policy page in the footer of your website. Follow the below steps to do so:
First method:
1. First, you will need to create a new custom menu by visiting Appearance > Menus
2. Next, click on the “Create a new menu” link on the top.
3. Now, you need to provide a new name for your custom navigation menu.
4. On the left column, click on the “View All” tab to view all the pages and select all the required pages you want to add. And then click on the “Add to Menu” button.
5. Now, all your selected pages will appear under your newly created menu. You can now arrange menu items by simply dragging them up or down.
Once you are done, click on the “Save Menu” button to save your changes.
6. After that go to Appearance > Widgets
7. Now, click on “Navigation Menu” > Select “Footer Widget” and click on the “Add Widget” button.
8. Now on the right column, select the custom navigation menu you created earlier in the widget settings and click on the Save button to publish your changes.
The Privacy Policy page link is now added successfully in the website footer.
Second method:
Using WordPress Privacy Policy Generator Plugins
2. TermsFeed
4. WP Autoterms
5. Terms of Service & Privacy Policy Generator
Conclusion
No plugin or third-party tool can assure 100% GDPR compliance. However, it can help you get started on the path to GDPR compliance. If you are low on budget and want to have more control over your privacy policy, go for WordPress plugins which costs less as compared to third-party tools.
That’s all. We hope this guide helped you add Privacy Policy in your WordPress website. Share your thoughts in the comments below!