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Do you want to create a privacy policy for your website? Tune in, you are at the right place.
No matter what you are, whether a blogger, businessman or any other professional, it is important to have a privacy policy page on your website. As your website collects information about your users (website visitors), you are required to disclose it to them.
In this article, we will be explaining everything you should know about privacy policies and how to create a privacy policy for your WordPress website.
Before we begin let’s address the big question.
What is a privacy policy?
A privacy policy is a legal document that discloses the use of personal information of website visitors. It is important to let users know how you collect and use their information.
Websites collect different types of information from users. This information is commonly used for advertising and marketing purposes. Generally, a website collects the following information from its users:
- Name and email address using comment forms
- Age, gender, and location using contact forms
- User activity on the internet using trackers
- User preferences using cookies
- Other data collected by plugins and security tools
Why do you need a privacy policy?
Major privacy laws in the world require you to add a privacy policy to your website. It is a legal document and is required to comply with the laws.
There are stringent privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation aimed at protecting the privacy of users on the internet. Penalties for even small negligence can amount to millions.
Here is a guide to the biggest GDPR fines so far.
If you have business in the EU region, then you will have to comply with the GDPR regulations, or big fines will await you. There are many such privacy laws in the world like CCPA of California, LGPD of Brazil, CNIL of France, and POPIA of South Africa. These laws require you to disclose the use of personal information of your website visitors.
What are the requirements for a privacy policy?
Here is a list of basic requirements for a privacy policy page.
- Inform the users that you collect their personal information
- Let them know what data you collect, why you collect it, and how.
- Explain how third-party advertising and analytics are used
- Inform your website’s identity and contact information
- Provide guidelines on how users can access or delete the information stored
You can look at the privacy policy pages of major websites like Facebook to see how they outline the disclosures.
Here is a link to our privacy policy page.
How to create a privacy policy page? (Using WordPress tool)
Now let’s see how we can create a privacy policy page on your WordPress website using the default tool.
WordPress lets you easily create a privacy policy page for your website.
Open your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Settings > Privacy.
Click to create a new privacy policy page. WordPress will generate a privacy policy for your website. You can edit, reorder, add or delete any section on the page.
The auto-generated privacy policy page may not have all the fields you may require. You can add relevant sections accordingly.
After making necessary changes, Publish the page, and it will be added to the Home page menu.
How to create a cookie policy page? (Using a plugin)
A cookie policy is also a legal document that is used to disclose the use of cookies on your website. Websites use cookies to collect information from the users and use them for improving the user experience on the website.
The cookies collect information such as the user’s preferences, language settings, login credentials, etc. Websites will load these settings when next time the user visits.
If your website uses cookies it is important to have a properly drafted cookie policy page on your website. You can also add the cookie policy on your privacy policy page, but make sure you meet the requirements. Here is an article that explains the requirements for a GDPR-compliant cookie policy.
To create a cookie policy we will be using the ‘GDPR Cookie Consent’ plugin by WebToffee. It offers a complete cookie consent solution for WordPress websites. Check out this article to learn more about WordPress cookies.
Install and activate the plugin from the WordPress plugin repository. To know more about installing a WordPress plugin, refer to this article.
After installing the plugin, go to GDPR Cookie Consent > Policy generator.
The plugin will load a template for your cookie policy, you can edit or modify each section accordingly.
After making necessary changes, click on Create Cookie Policy page button to create a new cookie policy page, or click the Update existing Cookie Policy page button to update your existing cookie policy page.
The plugin thus enables an easy way to create a cookie policy page on your WordPress website.
Summing up
Privacy policy and cookie policy are important legal documents for your website. Make sure you comply with the privacy laws and regulations of the countries you do business with.
The General Data Protection Regulation has set a standard for privacy laws in the world. If your website uses cookies, we recommend that you install a cookie consent solution for your website.
The WordPress cookie consent plugin we used in this article can be used to comply with major cookie laws in the world.
Here is a detailed article about WooCommerce GDPR compliance that explains what you need to do to comply with GDPR guidelines.
We hope this article helped you in learning how to create a privacy policy for WordPress websites.
If you liked reading this article, drop your valuable feedback in the comments section.