Privacy policy

Google states that your Privacy Policy should include the following information:

• That third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to your blog
• That Google uses advertising cookies so it and its partners can serve ads to your users based on their visit to your blog and/or other blogs on the internet
• That users may opt out of all of this by visiting the Ad Settings page and other opt-out methods

Your Privacy Policy is where you let your readers know:

• What personal information you collect from them,
• How you collect, use and store this personal information,
• Why you need this personal information, and
• If you let any third parties collect, use or store this personal information

Let's take a look at a few examples of clauses that should be part of your blog's Privacy Policy:

• Information Collection and Use. This is where you inform users what personal information is being collected and how that collected data is used.



• Cookies. This is required by many third parties that you may end up using for your blog such as Google AdSense, Google AdWords and others as discussed above, as well as by the EU Cookies Directive in some cases.



• Links to Other Sites. This clause is usually used by individuals and companies to inform that their websites will contain links to other websites that are not controlled or owned by them. If your blog promotes third-party links like other blogs or recommended sites, you should include such a clause.

Even if you don't collect, use or store any personal information from your readers, having a Privacy Policy on your blog still comes with a huge benefit.

With privacy issues being more important than ever these days, users are considering Privacy Policies a sign of trustworthiness.

If you don't collect, use or store personal data, let users know that. Your Privacy Policy can be short and to the point, letting users know you don't do anything with their data.

Here's an example from Ecquire that makes it really clear that they don't have any of your data, and it's done in a humorous way:

It's never a bad idea to have a Privacy Policy, even if you don't actually need one according to laws or third parties