Website privacy policy

About this website privacy policy

This is a model website privacy policy, referred to by the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada (OIC) as a privacy statement. It is written in plain language that is visitor friendly. We have provided a large menu of paragraphs so that you can easily tailor the notice to suit the exact structure of your business and website.

Although this document cannot magically absolve you from risk of data mismanagement, it is a giant first step. Informing your visitors and customers (and other parties) about the data you collect about them is a requirement. A privacy notice is a simple way to comply, but a good privacy notice goes further. It is prime evidence to everyone with whom you deal that you take confidentiality seriously. That can help increase the trust that visitors and customers have in your business and boost their confidence in using your services or buying from you.

When to use this website privacy policy

If you have a website, regardless of the size, or whether you are trading from it, it is highly likely that you will be collecting information about your customers in some way, even if you don’t use the information. If you collect information, you need to disclose this in a privacy statement.

A common example of information collection that is covered by the law is anonymous visitor tracking. If you use Google Analytics, weblogs or any similar software, you are collecting data about your site visitors and your privacy policy will need to disclose this.

The law in this privacy notice

In order to provide our customers with the greatest possible level of compliance, the Net Lawman website privacy policy follows the guidance as closely as possible, expanding with greater detail in areas that are less clear.

This document complies with Canadian law, including the Data Protection Legislation. (Note that having a privacy notice is just part of the requirements for compliance with the Data Protection laws).

Privacy notice features and contents

Your privacy statement should reflect the way in which your organisation collects and uses data. This will change between organisations enough to make each privacy policy unique, but with common elements that can be covered with standardised statements. In short, you will need to edit your privacy policy to reflect how your website and organisation operates, but we have done much of the legwork for you to make this an easy process.

There are 29 paragraphs in this document. In places we have provided a number of possibilities, where you choose the most appropriate option from the menu and delete the others. In other places, we have provided ideas and the most common scenarios, but the notice may require a little customisation to fully reflect your business.

The notice is drawn around:

• covering you for compliance with privacy laws and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA);
• protecting you from claims that you have misused data.
• reminding you how to avoid contravening the Canadian Data Protection Legislation;
• providing re-assurance to your customers or clients;
• maintaining a professional but friendly image.

The contents of the document cover:

• categorisation of different types of information and how you use them;
• how you collect, use and store financial information;
• information security and data retention;
• fraud prevention;
• cookies;
• collection of information by other means (such as telephone calls and e-mails);
• complaints;
• compliance with the law and disclosure to government;
• processing of data outside Canada;
• review, removal and update of collected data;
• third party advertising;
• the use of the site by children.