How to get a free privacy policy for your website: Easy guide

There is something you must include in your site or program namely a document detailing a privacy policy about how you gather, make use of, and secure users’ personally identifiable information. The truth is that the opposite will be true and instead, you might end up either with the attorney bill too pricey for a budget-conscious individual or when being the starter and newly exposed online business, with templates costing quite steep as well. The good news however is that you can easily create free privacy policy without much hassle. What this article sets out to do is explain every step in a way simple enough for a beginner to work through building a privacy policy for any website or mobile application. 

Why Do You Need a Privacy Policy?

There are two major reasons why a privacy policy is necessary for your website or app: 

• Legal Compliance: While laws do vary around the world, they all require a privacy policy if you collect any kind of personal data.
• Users trust: A privacy policy convinces users that you take their privacy seriously. Users are visiting your website to know what will happen to their personal data if they do. 

Core Components of a Privacy Policy

Before creating a privacy policy, you have to know what elements it should include. These will ensure that your policy is clear, comprehensive, and legally sound in all aspects: 

1. Types of Information Collected

• Identify all forms of data that your website or app collects. The data could be personal, financial, or behavioural.
• Personal identification information, names, and email addresses are the personal type of information collected.
• Mobile Application Geolocation Data

Provide descriptions of the categories of data collected in ordinary language so the users know exactly what data you’re collecting when a person is using your service. 

2. Data Utilization

Now that the type of data has been outlined, you’ve had to state exactly how you’ll be utilizing these data. The most common utilization uses include:

• Site or Application Experience Facilitation
• The provision of promotional stuff or updates for users who had granted consent previously
• Customer support
• Payment procedure

Indicate and explain why you are collecting data. 

3. Transferring Data to Third Parties

If you intend to share data with third parties, this should be reflected in your privacy policy. This is especially important when you use third-party analytics, payment processing, or advertising tools. It would help if you also made known to the users that their information will be transferred to these services. Here are a few examples:

• Google Analytics (to monitor the activities of users)
• Stripe or PayPal (if you use a third party for payment processing)

You may also want to ensure that users are aware that their information is being passed on and what these third parties will do with their information. 

4. What Information is Kept, and How Is It Safe?

Users want to be assured that their information will be safe. Your policy should explain how you make sure personal information is secured. This can include measures such as:

• Encrypting credit card numbers
• Storing information in secure databases
• Limit access to personal information to employees
• Upgrading the software to deter hackers

If you have implemented these measures, indicate them in your privacy statement and have users feel sure that the information they give to your website is secure. 

5. User Rights

You could have a variety of rights depending on the applicable data protection laws. To put it in a nutshell, some rights as provided by the GDPR are:

• The right of access to their information
• Right to request the erasure of their data
• Right to rectify inaccurate data
• Right to opt out from data collection or marketing emails

Ensure that you explain clearly these rights in your privacy policy, along with a guide on how users may exercise them. 

6. How to Contact You

Users may want to know about your privacy policy. Always include a contact method, such as an email address, in case users have questions about their personal data or privacy rights. 

How to Make a Privacy Policy for Free

We have covered the basic elements of a privacy policy, so let’s learn how you can make one for free.

1. Use a Privacy Policy Generator

The best way to write a free privacy policy is by using a privacy policy generator. It is an online tool that makes it easy for you to input information regarding your website or application. Based on the information input, they then generate your privacy policy on how you collect data from that information.

The tools will ask questions like:

• What do you collect?
• How will you use the data?
• Do you share data with third parties?

Once you answer those questions, the tool will create a privacy policy for you based on your business model.

2. Customize the Generated Privacy Policy

While these are useful privacy policy generators, the result can be fairly generic. Be sure to review and tailor this generated policy so that it fully reflects your data practices. Include information the generator missed, such as third-party services specific to your use or special data security practices in your business. 

3. Update Your Privacy Policy

Changes to privacy laws and your business needs are very likely. Make sure to check on your privacy policy from time to time and update it when necessary, reflecting present law and the way you use user data.

Check your privacy policy every six months or every time you add a new practice for collecting user data. 

Posting Your Privacy Policy

Once you have drafted your privacy policy, it must be accessible to your users. You can post it in several places on your website, such as:

• The footer of your website
• A separate “Privacy Policy” page
• A link on the sign-up or login page of your app

Make sure that the user can locate and read your privacy policy before he begins to enter personal data. 

Conclusion

Running a website or mobile app collecting personal data is one of the main steps, and so is having a privacy policy. A well-written one can be considered a sound tool for making sure that you remain legally compliant as well as winning over users’ trust. It can be said that generating your free mobile app privacy policy generator or using the free privacy policy tool has made things simple and inexpensive.