Incorporate Wiggle Room Into Your "Privacy Policy"

"Privacy Policy" is a doozie of a euphemism. Just as many wars have been launched by "Defense Departments," enormous amounts of personal information is leveraged for marketing purposes and traded in compliance with "Privacy Policies."

Most members of the general public mistakenly believe that privacy policies relate only to the contact information that they consciously submit to an organization via a registration form. But if they read the fine print, they'd realize that many privacy policies also grant permission to track the subscriber's view and click activity while interacting with the organization's website and emails.

Amazon.com is a master at this. Have you ever noticed that whenever you return to Amazon.com, or receive emails from them, the featured products are complementary to products that you've already bought or browsed at their website? That's because Amazon.com's privacy policy allows them sufficient latitude to track and cater to your behaviors.

Aggressive marketers will go one step further. Their privacy policies allow them to share your contact and behavioral information with "other organizations with products and services that may interest you." In other words, they can sell the personal information they collect about you to anyone who will pay for it.

A "right to privacy" debate is beyond the scope of this book. However, it is in your own best interest to make your registration form's privacy policy as far-reaching and flexible as possible. Make yourself "penalty-proof" by stating all of the possible legal ways that personal data could be collected, leveraged, and shared, whether or not you plan to do those activities. Since consumers rarely read privacy policies, far-reaching permissions won't lose a single subscriber, but will give you protection against lawsuits.