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Privacy Policy Free Template – GDPR 2024 Compliant

Gwen Rodgers Written by: Gwen Rodgers
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Sometimes “small things” like privacy policies might slip your mind when building your website. You are so focused on the color scheme and navigation bars, that this “silly little page” doesn’t register. However, when the EU passed its General Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws, it is now essential for you to consider online privacy policy issues, especially if your target audience is located in one or more EU countries.

Let’s take a quick moment and deep dive into online privacy policy issues.

Does My Website Need a Privacy Policy?

If your website collects data from visitors, displays ads, and/or tracks visitors via analytics, then yes, your website most definitely needs a privacy policy.

If your business address is located in the EU and/or you plan to do business with customers in the EU, then not only do you need a privacy policy, BUT it must be GDPR-compliant.

What Will Your Privacy Policy Include?

Your privacy policy will include an explanation of three essential things:
  1. What kind of information you gather
  2. How this information is collected
  3. How the information is stored and protected

Is There a Difference in the Types of Information Collected?

Yes – privacy policies differentiate between identifiable information versus non-private data.

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, ‘personally identifiable information’ is defined as:

“Any information about an individual maintained by an agency, including (1) any information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, such as name, social security number, date and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, or biometric records; and (2) any other information that is linked or linkable to an individual, such as medical, educational, financial, and employment information.”

Whereas ‘non-private data’ is defined as:

“Information that may correspond to a particular person, account or profile, but is not sufficient to identify, contact, or locate the person to whom such information pertains.”

If I Don’t Publish a Privacy Policy on My Website, Could There Be any Consequences?

Yes.

It is a punishable offense to collect data without the user’s knowledge. You need to state exactly what type of information you are collecting, and regularly update your privacy policy if this information changes. If you do not, you will face a substantial fine of 20 million Euro or 4% of your global revenue.

Privacy Policy Free Template – 100% GDPR Compliant

At WebsitePlanet.com we want to help you get started – and hopefully, save you some money on legal fees – so we have prepared the following sample privacy policy. You are free to download it, modify it, use it on your website, and share it with your friends and colleagues.

Be sure to modify the portions that appear in braces  { … }  where you must modify the sample to reflect the specifics of your website.

WE ARE NICE GUYS, BUT WE ARE NOT LAWYERS AND THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. THIS SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY IS A STARTING POINT AND FRAMEWORK FOR YOU TO USE TOGETHER WITH THE ADVICE AND MODIFICATIONS OF QUALIFIED AND EXPERIENCED LEGAL ADVISORS.

The following is a sample privacy policy template that you can modify and use to suit your company’s specific needs – be sure to consult with experienced legal advisors:

A. Introduction
  1. The privacy of our website visitors is very important to us, and we are committed to safeguarding it. This policy explains what we will do with your personal information.
  2. Consenting to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy when you first visit our website permits us to use cookies every time you visit our website.
B. Credit
This document was created using a template from SEQ Legal (seqlegal.com)
and modified by Website Planet (www.websiteplanet.com)

C. Collecting personal information

The following types of personal information may be collected, stored, and used:
  1. information about your computer including your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, and operating system;
  2. information about your visits to and use of this website including the referral source, length of visit, page views, and website navigation paths;
  3. information, such as your email address, that you enter when you register with our website;
  4. information that you enter when you create a profile on our website—for example, your name, profile pictures, gender, birthday, relationship status, interests and hobbies, educational details, and employment details;
  5. information, such as your name and email address, that you enter in order to set up subscriptions to our emails and/or newsletters;
  6. information that you enter while using the services on our website;
  7. information that is generated while using our website, including when, how often, and under what circumstances you use it;
  8. information relating to anything you purchase, services you use, or transactions you make through our website, which includes your name, address, telephone number, email address, and credit card details;
  9. information that you post to our website with the intention of publishing it on the internet, which includes your username, profile pictures, and the content of your posts;
  10. information contained in any communications that you send to us by email or through our website, including its communication content and metadata;
  11. any other personal information that you send to us.
Before you disclose to us the personal information of another person, you must obtain that person’s consent to both the disclosure and the processing of that personal information in accordance with this policy

D. Using your personal information

Personal information submitted to us through our website will be used for the purposes specified in this policy or on the relevant pages of the website. We may use your personal information for the following:
  1. administering our website and business;
  2. personalizing our website for you;
  3. enabling your use of the services available on our website;
  4. sending you goods purchased through our website;
  5. supplying services purchased through our website;
  6. sending statements, invoices, and payment reminders to you, and collecting payments from you;
  7. sending you non-marketing commercial communications;
  8. sending you email notifications that you have specifically requested;
  9. sending you our email newsletter, if you have requested it (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require the newsletter);
  10. sending you marketing communications relating to our business or the businesses of carefully-selected third parties which we think may be of interest to you, by post or, where you have specifically agreed to this, by email or similar technology (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require marketing communications);
  11. providing third parties with statistical information about our users (but those third parties will not be able to identify any individual user from that information);
  12. dealing with inquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to our website;
  13. keeping our website secure and prevent fraud;
  14. verifying compliance with the terms and conditions governing the use of our website (including monitoring private messages sent through our website private messaging service); and
  15. other uses.
If you submit personal information for publication on our website, we will publish and otherwise use that information in accordance with the license you grant to us.

Your privacy settings can be used to limit the publication of your information on our website and can be adjusted using privacy controls on the website.

We will not, without your express consent, supply your personal information to any third party for their or any other third party’s direct marketing.

E. Disclosing personal information

We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, agents, suppliers, or subcontractors as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy.

We may disclose your personal information to any member of our group of companies (this means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and all its subsidiaries) as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy.

We may disclose your personal information:
  1. to the extent that we are required to do so by law;
  2. in connection with any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings;
  3. in order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk);
  4. to the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business or asset that we are (or are contemplating) selling; and
  5. to any person who we reasonably believe may apply to a court or other competent authority for disclosure of that personal information where, in our reasonable opinion, such court or authority would be reasonably likely to order disclosure of that personal information.
Except as provided in this policy, we will not provide your personal information to third parties.

F. International data transfers
  1. Information that we collect may be stored, processed in, and transferred between any of the countries in which we operate in order to enable us to use the information in accordance with this policy.
  2. Information that we collect may be transferred to the following countries which do not have data protection laws equivalent to those in force in the European Economic Area: the United States of America, Russia, Japan, China, and India.
  3. Personal information that you publish on our website or submit for publication on our website may be available, via the internet, around the world. We cannot prevent the use or misuse of such information by others.
  4. You expressly agree to the transfers of personal information described in this Section F.
G. Retaining personal information
  1. This Section G sets out our data retention policies and procedure, which are designed to help ensure that we comply with our legal obligations regarding the retention and deletion of personal information.
  2. Personal information that we process for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.
  3. Without prejudice to article G-2, we will usually delete personal data falling within the categories set out below at the date/time set out below:
    1. personal data type will be deleted {ENTER DATE/TIME}; and
    2. {ENTER ADDITIONAL DATES/TIMES}.
  4. Notwithstanding the other provisions of this Section G, we will retain documents (including electronic documents) containing personal data:
    1. to the extent that we are required to do so by law;
    2. if we believe that the documents may be relevant to any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings; and
    3. in order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk).
H. Security of your personal information
  1. We will take reasonable technical and organizational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse, or alteration of your personal information.
  2. We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password- and firewall-protected) servers.
  3. All electronic financial transactions entered into through our website will be protected by encryption technology.
  4. You acknowledge that the transmission of information over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.
  5. You are responsible for keeping the password you use for accessing our website confidential; we will not ask you for your password (except when you log in to our website).
I. Amendments

We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new version on our website. You should check this page occasionally to ensure you understand any changes to this policy. We may notify you of changes to this policy by email or through the private messaging system on our website.

J. Your rights

You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you; provision of such information will be subject to the following:
  1. the payment of a fee {ENTER FEE IF RELEVANT}; and
  2. the supply of appropriate evidence of your identity ({ADJUST TEXT TO REFLECT YOUR POLICY for this purpose, we will usually accept a photocopy of your passport certified by a notary plus an original copy of a utility bill showing your current address}).
We may withhold personal information that you request to the extent permitted by law.

You may instruct us at any time not to process your personal information for marketing purposes.

In practice, you will usually either expressly agree in advance to our use of your personal information for marketing purposes, or we will provide you with an opportunity to opt out of the use of your personal information for marketing purposes.

K. Third party websites

Our website includes hyperlinks to, and details of, third party websites. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the privacy policies and practices of third parties.

L. Updating information

Please let us know if the personal information that we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.

M. Cookies

Our website uses cookies. A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed. Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies. {SELECT ACCURATE PHRASING We use only session cookies / only persistent cookies / both session and persistent cookies on our website.}
  1. The names of the cookies that we use on our website, and the purposes for which they are used, are set out below:
    1. we use Google Analytics and Adwords on our website to recognize a computer when a user {INCLUDE ALL USES THAT COOKIES ARE USED FOR ON YOUR SITE visits the website / track users as they navigate the website / enable the use of a shopping cart on the website / improve the website’s usability / analyze the use of the website / administer the website / prevent fraud and improve the security of the website / personalize the website for each user / target advertisements which may be of particular interest to specific users / describe purpose(s)};
  2. Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies—for example:
    1. in Internet Explorer (version 10) you can block cookies using the cookie handling override settings available by clicking “Tools,” “Internet Options,” “Privacy,” and then “Advanced”;
    2. in Firefox (version 24) you can block all cookies by clicking “Tools,” “Options,” “Privacy,” selecting “Use custom settings for history” from the drop-down menu, and unticking “Accept cookies from sites”; and
    3. in Chrome (version 29), you can block all cookies by accessing the “Customize and control” menu, and clicking “Settings,” “Show advanced settings,” and “Content settings,” and then selecting “Block sites from setting any data” under the “Cookies” heading.
Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites. If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website.

  1. You can delete cookies already stored on your computer—for example:
    1. in Internet Explorer (version 10), you must manually delete cookie files (you can find instructions for doing so at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278835 );
    2. in Firefox (version 24), you can delete cookies by clicking “Tools,” “Options,” and “Privacy”, then selecting “Use custom settings for history”, clicking “Show Cookies,” and then clicking “Remove All Cookies”; and
    3. in Chrome (version 29), you can delete all cookies by accessing the “Customize and control” menu, and clicking “Settings,” “Show advanced settings,” and “Clear browsing data,” and then selecting “Delete cookies and other site and plug-in data” before clicking “Clear browsing data.”
  2. Deleting cookies will have a negative impact on the usability of many websites.

What is GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a set of laws that was created to protect the personal data of European Union (EU) citizens. The Council of the European Union, European Parliament, and European Commission joined forces to help people have better control over their personal data.

Officially approved by European Parliament in 2016, the EU allowed a two-year grace period for companies and organizations to comply with the new regulations. Therefore, as of May 25, 2018, any business not complying with the new GDPR laws will be breaking the law.

Who Is Affected by the GDPR?

Any business operating within the EU and any company that does business, or hopes to do business, with citizens of the European Union must comply with the new laws. Even companies outside the EU are affected if they offer goods or services to citizens of the EU, and anyone who holds personal data of EU citizens can be penalized as of May 25, 2018.

What Sort of Data Falls under the GDPR?

Any information classified as personal details that can be used to identify a citizen of the EU is protected by the GDPR and includes, but is not exclusive to, the following data:
  • Name
  • Photo
  • Email address
  • Social media posts
  • Personal medical information
  • IP addresses
  • Bank details
Minors cannot legally grant consent to use their personal data; therefore, parents or guardians of children ages 16 and under must be asked for permission before a company can use the minor’s data.

Why Should Companies Comply with the GDPR?

Any business that does not comply with the GDPR by May 25 will be subjected to steep fines by the EU to the tune of up to 4% or 20 million Euro of global revenue, whichever is highest. And there are more penalties where that came from, depending on the infraction.

Maybe even more important than anything else, the loss of credibility in the marketplace awaits those companies that fail to adhere to the new laws. To put it differently, embracing the GDPR laws assists in building trust among the company’s customers and website visitors. When individuals feel secure, their inclination to engage in transactions with the organization increases. Adhering to GDPR isn’t solely a legal requirement; it stands as a cornerstone of sound business practice.

What Happens If There Is a Data Breach?

If there is a data breach, which is when an outsider gains access to an individual’s data without permission, the GDPR requires companies to notify the appropriate data protection authorities within 72 hours. The company must also inform the affected individuals as quickly as possible. It is important to note that the GDPR’s main goal is to protect users’ private information.

What Will the New Privacy Policies Look Like?

Now that you understand the reasoning for the laws and some of the basics of the laws themselves, here are some guidelines for how to write your privacy policy in a GDPR-compliant way:
  1. Make sure the policy is short and concise. The privacy policy must have three basic elements: it must be concise and easily accessible; it must be written clearly in plain language that even a child could understand; and it must be free of charge.
  2. Explain your use of the data. Describe what you are going to do with the data once you collect it. For example, state whether you will use it for marketing purposes or to sell to third parties.
  3. Explain your use of cookies. If you use cookies for online behavioral advertising, which tracks visitors’ interests and online habits, you will need to let your website visitors know.
  4. Be transparent about sharing data with third parties. Clearly state with whom you will be sharing data you collect and for what purpose. While it is within the law to share information about individuals with auditors, social networks, and customer service vendors, to name a few, it is unlawful not to inform your website visitors.
  5. Explain the rights of the individual. You are required to explain what privacy rights your visitors have. Their rights include the following:
  • They can request that their data be deleted or corrected
  • They can access the data a company has about them
  • They can request that their data be transferred to another party
  • They must give consent for their data to be used
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Gwen Rodgers
Gwen Rodgers
Gwen is a web developer and software engineer who loves to get lost in JavaScript (and a good book). She spends her free time teaching girls how to be coders, and doing yoga on her balcony in the sunshine.

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anonymus
January 18, 2021
A matéria do site é de grande ajuda para nós que estamos começando, só tenho elogios e agradecer muito obrigado pelo site.
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anonymus
January 18, 2021
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Website Planet Team
January 18, 2021
Estamos felizes que você achou este artigo informativo.
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Website Planet Team
January 18, 2021
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Lege Nova
April 17, 2020
The above article is very helpful and informative. This blog is very interesting as it simplifies solutions for users who have any type of business. Thanks for sharing!
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Lege Nova
April 17, 2020
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Rachael
May 13, 2019
Many thanks for this template. I'm setting up my first website and this ha saved me a lot of time. This will be invaluable - so important nowadays to get the small print right.
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Rachael
May 13, 2019
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