What is a Privacy Policy?

A Privacy Policy is a document that discloses what personal information you collect on your website, what you do with that information, and who you share it with, amongst the other disclosures required by the privacy laws that apply to you.

Your website needs a Privacy Policy if you use it to collect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) such as names, IP addresses, phone numbers, and emails. Most websites collect personal information through the use of contact forms, email newsletter sign up forms, analytics, ad tracking tools, and more.

Websites commonly collect PII through the following features:

• Contact forms;
• Email newsletter sign-up forms;
• Account creation forms;
• Checkout forms; and
• Analytics services such as Google Analytics.

PII is actually protected by multiple privacy laws that require certain websites to have a Privacy Policy that makes very specific disclosures.

You don’t need to share, sell, or even use the personal information you collect for these privacy laws to apply to your website.

Google requires your website to have a Privacy Policy

A website utilising Google Analytics is required by Google to have a Privacy Policy. You can find this requirement within section 7 of Google’s Terms of Service: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/terms/us/