Do I need a privacy policy?

[babyface]

Hello,

After another meticulous inspection of the google adsense guidelines i noticed it mentions that all adsense publishers must have and abide by a privacy policy. Is this a strict policy for every website that runs adsense? including simple blogs or review sites? I thought this just applied to ecommerce and sites that request your personal info?

Also since I assume people can't just copy a privacy policy from other sites, how would I go about setting one up and making sure it contained the correct regulatory conditions?

Thanks

[tke71709]

Yes, you need a privacy policy if you want to be compliant with the Adsense terms no matter what type of site that you are running because as soon as you use cookies to serve ads it's necessary.

You can just use a site like http://www.serprank.com/privacy-policy-generator/ to generate a privacy policy.

[hooperman]

After another meticulous inspection of the google adsense guidelines i noticed it mentions that all adsense publishers must have and abide by a privacy policy. Is this a strict policy for every website that runs adsense?

That's what it says

Here's a privacy policy template.

[grynge]

It also depends on the country you are in and the details you collect. Here in Australia if you collect someones name and email address you must comply with the Privacy Act. They have some stiff penalties if you don't comply.

[ian]

If you use Wordpress on your sites there is a plugin called Easy Privacy that automatically creates an Adsense compliant policy for you. Other than that, either of those generators will do the trick.

[babyface]

thanks to these few posts i now have one up and running so thanks. It mentions cookies and web beacons and seems pretty comprehensive. Looking to the future i'm now wondering if this completely covers me for ALL advertising... affiliate marketing? clickbank etc?

[ian]

I modified my Adsense policy to include affiliate disclosures as well. Do a quick Google search for an affiliate disclosure template and add it in to your policy. There are probably Clickbank, Amazon and other affiliate network policies too.

[Clinton]

Is this a strict policy for every website that runs adsense?

http://clickhereyouidiot.com was banned from Adsense

After excluding everything else it turns out that the reason probably was because it didn't have a privacy policy. (Either that or Google had a sense of humour failure)

So I'd say, play it safe and stick a policy on the site.