Lesson #19 Your Privacy Policy
Written By Titmowse

Whether your members and surfers read it or not, your paysite should carry a privacy policy. Perhaps more than any other adult page, the paysite is subject to laws regarding privacy and information collection.

You will be sending membership confirmation emails and applying your company name onto the bank statements of your customers. Your servers will be downloading cookies to your member’s machines. You will be collecting very personal information about them and they have a legal right to know what you do with that information.

In fact, it’s entirely probable that a surfer may not be able to load your tour or get your join form to work correctly if your privacy policy is not compliant with W3C’s standards. The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium. They set the standards for the way web pages look, what languages are used to create them and all sorts of other behind the scenes details. When a law or regulation is created affecting a website’s security/privacy policies you can be sure the W3C will be behind the exact wording of those laws and regulations. The companies that create browser software do so in accordance with standards set by the W3C. Most current browser programs include a security setting dialog box where a surfer can block sites that do not have a W3C compliant privacy policy. Some browsers even set security settings at medium as default. A medium setting can refuse your paysite or disallow cookies to be set on a surfer’s machine.

A privacy policy is a document that states clearly what the site in question will do with information collected from it’s users. You may have business relationships with other paysites or more than one paysite to promote. A common marketing practice is the sharing of email addresses among site owners.

Take CNET as an example. CNET is an informational Internet portal catering to all things having to do with computers. If you’re a fan of freeware and shareware, you know them best as the folks who give you Download.com. Any time you go to Download.com, they will try to set a cookie on your machine. That cookie tracks usage information and helps to determine important statistical information about your computer. If you sign up for any of the free or paid services CNET offers, it’s quite possible you will receive email advertising information and offers from one of CNET’s many other sub-companies like ZDNET. You will probably also receive emails from the companies who pay to advertise on CNET. You may think you did not opt in for these emails but if you read the PRIVACY POLICY located on the CNET site, you’ll see you in fact did. The privacy policy on the site tells the reader that collected emails will be shared with CNET’s other businesses and advertisers and by agreeing to their terms of sign up, you agreed to their privacy policy.

A privacy policy protects both the surfer and the site just like any other disclaimer.

As stated, a paysite more than any other kind of adult site must have a compliant privacy policy available for the public to view. In our next lesson, you’ll learn how to make a privacy policy for your paysite.