If you are like most people, you don’t really want to read privacy policies when shopping online. They aren’t typically easy to understand. Nor are they often descriptive enough for you to actually grasp what a company is doing with your information. Even so, we believe they can be valuable tools to help you protect your personal information. You might discover privacy settings and choices you were unaware of.
You will also find that some businesses take your privacy more seriously than others, which may help you choose who to do business with.
What Is a Privacy Policy?
A privacy policy is a legal statement explaining how a company collects, handles, processes, and respects its customers’ personal data on a website or app. For example, businesses like Luxury Clothing have a clear privacy policy on their website. The privacy policy uses clear and explicit language to ensure that their customers or website visitors understand what personal data the company collects and how the company will use that information.
Why is it Important to Read Terms of Use and Privacy Policies?
Boring as they seem, user agreements exist for a reason. It is basically the only way to understand what happens to your personal information and decide whether you’re OK with it. Why is that important?
Free Services Are Paid with Your Personal Data
For many digital businesses, collecting and selling your personal information is their primary way to make money. This is why it is important to double check their privacy policy. They provide details of your online activities, preferences, and location to advertisers and get paid for that data. In turn, advertisers become able to show you personalized and more efficient ads.
Data Breaches Happen
To be precise, data breaches happen every single day. The more companies handle your private information, the higher the risk of hackers stealing it. After reading through a Privacy Policy, you may decide not to use a particular app, because of how they will use your data. It’s your choice.
Your Consent Is Legally Binding
Imagine you found out that a social media network used your personal information—perhaps your image, taken from your profile, was included in their marketing campaign. You might be upset and wondering how that could happen. The chances are that when you agreed to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policies, you gave your consent—because you didn’t read through all the fine print.
If you aren’t going to read a policy in full before you decide to give a website or app your information, we have 3 tips to help you find important information and make decisions quickly!
1.Look for a privacy policy before you give a site or app any information that you think is important.
This seems obvious, but we still come across sites and apps that don’t have privacy policies. As a matter of best practice (and often law), websites and apps that collect personal information from you should have a privacy policy. You can typically find a privacy policy on the bottom of a web page or within your app store prior to download. If you can’t find a privacy policy, consider it a red flag. Also contact us and let us know.
2.Check to see what security measures a company uses to protect your information.
The privacy policy should give you a sense of what the company does to maintain the security of your information. It may not go into great detail, and it probably won’t promise 100% security (because there is no such thing). However, if there is no mention of security, consider taking your business elsewhere because it is possible that the company hasn’t even thought about it.
3.Find out whether you have any privacy choices.
Now that you know a company has at least thought about privacy and security, scroll through the policy to see if there are any opt-outs or privacy settings you can take advantage of. For example, does the company allow you to opt out of having your information shared with third parties for marketing purposes? Are you able to access and correct or delete information that the company maintains on you?