It has come to be a commonality that in our everyday lives, information about us is being gathered. Not just by the people we introduce ourselves to, but electronically as well. This means that whenever you swipe your credit card or link in you Facebook status to that sweet game your playing. Has anyone stopped to think what is happening to that information after it has been gathered? Does the company keep it, use it just for that instance so you need to provide it again, share it with marketing companies? The truth is that we really do not know, unless there is a privacy policy kicking around on their site. Sites like Party Poker, Facebook Games made by Zynga and any other mobile/desktop applications need to have a Privacy Policy.
Most developers right now will be asking, “How do I make a Privacy Policy for my site as I am experienced in code not some fancy literature.” The truth is, you really do not have to be great at the wording because Privacy Choice has your back. They are a privacy policy maker that steps you through making a privacy policy. At every step you choose an option and are given the choice to customize the choice with your own wording if need be or add in an extra line if you need it. This application made Binary Wasteland realize that we needed one of the Privacy Policies, not only for the mobile applications we develop but one we could use to encompass everything. We may not have much in the way of information gathering but we do want our readers to feel secure when reading with us.
Privacy Choice walked us through these steps and made recommendations on what a standard privacy policy should include and for the most part, we stuck with it. On occasion we did need to edit the text to include our email address, and extra line for a unique piece of information we gathered and our mailing address for those wanting to opt out of certain features. After we had completed these steps we are given a link that lead us back to the mobile version of our privacy policy and we also had the option to get the full text where we created a privacy policy page on our site for the desktop users. This allows us to let our readers know what we collect and what is happening with the information collected.
All in all, we found Privacy Choice to be a refreshing experience from the everyday expectations of writing a privacy policy. Hey, it was not written by a lawyer, but ultimately, something instead of nothing regarding privacy policies is the best way to look at it. We know developers care about the users they develop for an a lawsuit is the last thing they want to hear or have on their minds. Make sure you have a privacy policy and let your users know about it! Until the next developer update, Happy Hacking!
