A website confidentiality policy is a statement on a website that outlines how information is collected from a website, how it is used and stored. A website privacy policy is exactly the same, meaning there are no differences between the two besides the terminology used.
These definitions can be used interchangeably. Including these policies on a website is legally required under Australian law and in many cases, laws of other countries, if and where any information at all from a visitor or customer, is being collected. This includes email addresses, credit card information and even information collected by cookies.
The purpose of including these privacy or confidentiality statements is to protect against misuse of personal information, submitted to and collected by websites. In addition, and importantly, there are laws which require website owners (and all businesses) that collect personal information to inform people of this and how it is used and stored.
The inclusion of the privacy policy statements on websites ensures compliance with this law. Privacy policies for many websites should be quite extensive and cover any possible uses and all information collected. Following this, they are a practical requirement for every website.
One important aspect of these policies is how the information that is collected will be stored, and this must be clearly outlined in the statement. From a consumer point of view this is quite important and is intended to make it clear what is being collected, how it is stored and to give piece of mind, especially if the information includes things such as credit card details. There is also a legal requirement to ensure that websites securely store this type of information.
Every website should include all information obtained from a user or visitor to the website along with the reason why any information collected is needed and how it will be used or stored.
In some instances, this may be obvious, such as, collecting email addresses for the purpose of sending a receipt or a mailing address for the purpose of sending a product. However, this law is in place to ensure that the exact purpose for the collection of information is made known to the user and that there is not an ulterior or alternative one, such as sending advertisements from multiple companies or selling their address information.
The privacy policy should state what information is collected and how it is collected, and how it is kept secure which is particularly important for websites that have cookies and the visitors to the site are not aware their information is being collected and stored. This aspect of a privacy policy needs to be detailed and comprehensive and many good websites include a dedicated Privacy Policy Statement page outlining how information is used and stored.
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