Request Customized Document In this technology driven world, it is no surprise that there are over 100 million internet users across the globe. With the advancement of technology, what has also advanced is the concern over large tracts of personal information the service providers have entry or access to. For a service provider, protection of a visitor’s personal credentials is of prime importance. By way of a well defined privacy policy, the service providers commit to protect the personal information of the visitors.
Service providers, with the intent of providing their services, collect, use and store visitors’ personal information.
By means of a well defined privacy policy, service providers make a declaration to the visitors on the website as to what they will do with their personal information and also declare how they will use, collect, disclose or share it with third parties and store the visitor’s personal information; any information that can be used to identify a visitor, his/her name, email address, phone no. etc.
Purpose of collecting information and its usage – Well drafted privacy policies inform the visitors about the need for collecting, using and disseminating information, it also informs visitors about how the information will be collected and used.
Contact Details – Privacy policy needs to mention the contact details of the owner of the website.
Security Practices and Policies – Privacy policies need to mention how the site owner is going to keep visitors’ personal information safe from being misused or used unauthorizedly, and what practices and procedures are adopted to do so.
Disclosure of Information to Third Parties – Privacy policies should inform the visitors upfront that the information provided to the site owners shall not be shared with third parties unless such third parties are performing as part of the site owner’s services to the visitors. It is mandatory that the third parties maintain confidentiality. It is also essential to mention in the privacy policy statement that personal information like religion, political affiliation, race, etc also should not be disclosed by site owners without the express consent of the visitors.
Disclaimer – By way of this clause, the visitors are made known that any personal information that is disclosed by them on the comments section, public message boards of the site can be used by others and hence, they are not supposed to disclose any such personal information on public platforms. And if they so happen to post messages on public platforms, the site owner shall not be held responsible or liable for such disclosures. The site owner shall also not be held responsible for any disclosure that is personal in nature and is made by visitors on any linked websites. Nevertheless, it is pertinent to mention that personal information of a visitor shall be disclosed by the site owner if the law of the land requires so to protect and safeguard the rights of the site owner and the visitors.
Use of Cookies – Cookies may be referred to as pieces of information given by the web server to a web browser. Cookies are added to the computer with the purpose of uniquely identifying visitor’s browser and helps in improving the quality of service provide by the site. Cookies collect information about your use of the Site and stores your preference while using a site. Visitors can choose to turn off cookies in their browser settings.
Changes – This clause states that privacy policies of a website are changed from time to time and as to how personal information of visitors will be collected and used, and in case of any substantial change the same shall be notified on the site to the visitors. By way of this clause visitors are thereby informed that they need to check the privacy policy of the site regularly.
Opting Out – Visitors need to be made known that if at any given time they decide to stop sharing any information or opt out from sharing any information, will that be allowed and what would the necessary consequences be. They should also be informed that they can contact the website to stop the use of any information relating to them.
By introducing Section 43 A, considerable amendments were made to The Information Technology Act of 2000 by the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008. The new section aimed at providing compensation in cases in which any body corporate that was involved in the act of possessing and dealing with sensitive personal information in a computer was negligent in adopting proper security practices and thereby caused wrongful gain/loss to any party.
The Government of India prescribed the Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011 in the year 2011. The concerned rules required a body corporate to provide privacy policies for dealing with or handling of any sensitive personal information or data. And it had prescribed that a privacy policy should consist the following information:
The privacy policy was required to be made available on the website of the body corporate for the visitors. The rules also required to designate a Grievance Officer who would redress the grievances of the visitors within the stipulated period  of a month. And the body corporate was also required to publish the name and contact details of the said officer.
We, at LegalDesk, understand and value the need to safeguard your personal information. What we also understand is that the use of standardized forms and templates on Privacy Policies which are readily available online is not the way to go. These ready-made templates can do more harm than good, because each privacy policy needs to be drafted according to the needs of an individual site. This is exactly where LegalDesk comes to your rescue. You can get your Privacy Policy draft online from our website and get it tailor-made for you. Now, that you are on our site, please take a moment of your time to go through our list of legal documents and deeds. You can create any of the documents and can have us print it on Stamp paper and deliver to you at the location of your choice.
