Chapter 29: Defining Privacy for the Corporate Web Site

Chapter 29

Defining Privacy for the Corporate Web Site

The first contact a customer has with a company often is made via that company s Web site. This contact should be as inviting as possible. Your Web site should convey an element of comfort. You often will not get a second chance to earn your customers trust, so take every opportunity to win their confidence from the get-go. Providing a privacy statement on your Web site to express your company s position on customer privacy is key to instilling confidence in visitors to your site. This chapter will examine how you can define privacy for your Web site and outline some considerations to keep in mind when collecting personal data on your Web site.

Many Web sites collect information from their visitors so that these visitors can access special content on the site, the site can add these visitors to a membership plan, and the company can attempt to sell goods and services to visitors at a later date. If you are collecting information from your site s users, you need to explain why you are collecting this information. The explanation should be part of a privacy statement that is clearly visible and simple to understand.

When collecting information, collect only the information that you need. Ensure that the transmission and storage of this data is secure. Encrypt the data to make it difficult for database administrators and attackers to access it. Do not share this information with third parties unless doing so is necessary to provide the services that you have offered to your customers.