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Guidelines to Website Privacy Policy

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Purpose of this policy

This Website Privacy Policy is intended for simple business and personal websites (including blogs) that have limited interaction with visitors. The policy sets out what the owner of the website will do with information received from visitors to the website.

The privacy policy form reflects the following assumptions:

  • The website has some user interaction (like comments on a blog) and some collection of information (like email addresses for newsletters), but the website does not involve collaboration on a project (like community generated software or content).
  • The website does not offer user accounts to visitors, although some form of user verification may be required for making comments on a blog.
  • There are no commercial transactions on the website.
  • There is no data exchange using third-party application programming interfaces (APIs) like OpenID.
  • The website is not intended for children under 13 years old.
  • If you have questions or concerns about whether this form is suitable for you, you will consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction.

Some of the issues not addressed in this Privacy Policy include:

  • Handling commercial transactions (for example, using credit cards).
  • The exchange of the personal information of website visitors, using third-party APIs.
  • Collecting and handling personal information for children under 13.
This form of privacy policy is intended to be compatible with North American common law jurisdictions.

Is this form suitable for you?

LexPublica can't choose a contract or policy template for you nor give you legal advice (see our Terms of Service). No single privacy policy is appropriate for all circumstances. If you're not sure about what you need, you should consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction. You should also consult a lawyer if you need help customizing this form for your individual circumstances.

Filling out the Website Privacy Policy form

Review the entire Website Privacy Policy form and the supporting documents, to make sure the form meets your needs. If it does, complete the form as follows.

    1.    In the introduction at the start of the Privacy Policy, fill in:
            (a)    the name of the website;
            (b)    the primary domain name or URL (uniform resource locator) of the website;
            (c)    the full legal name website owner; and
            (d)    the address of the website owner.
    2.    In section 4 ("Collection of Personal Information"), list any additional ways that the website may collect Personal Information from website visitors. If there are none, then delete the blank item.
    3.    In section 10 ("Collection of Potentially Identifying Information"), list any additional types of Potentially Identifying Information that the website may collect from website visitors. If there are none, then delete the blank item.
    3.    In sections 7(b)(2), 12(c)(2) and 16(c)(2) ("enforcing Terms of Service"), delete the phrase to "Terms of Service and" if your Website does not have Terms of Service. (In general, you should consider having Terms of Service.)
    4.    In section 21 ("Note to International Users"), fill in the country where the website is hosted. Note that this may be different than the country where you or your business reside. If you're not the person responsible for technical hosting issues, you should check with your technical staff where the website is actually hosted.
    5.    In section 24 ("Questions"), fill in:

            (a)    the email address to be used for questions about the privacy policy (you may wish to create an email address like legal@yourwebsite.com or privacy@yourwebsite.com, and direct emails from those addresses to the appropriate person or people in your business or organization); and

            (b)    the contact information for regular mail.

    6.    In section 25, fill in the effective date of the policy.

Attribution requirement

As noted at the end of the template, you may use and share the template with anyone, free of charge, on the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, and you must keep the notice (including links) on copies of the template, including on versions that you fill out and use.

You may also modify the template. If you do so, you must include the following notice at the end of the modified template:

This template is based on a LexPublica (http://lexpubli.ca) template for a Website Privacy Policy. View the original template at http://lexpubli.ca/contracts/privacy. You may use and share this template with anyone, free of charge, on the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. You may also modify the template. In all cases, you must keep this notice (including links) on copies or modified versions of the template, including on versions that you fill out and use.
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
This Work, LexPublica, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, although certain works referenced herein may be separately licensed.