Business’ Privacy Policy

Privacy policies, or privacy notices, are long, complex legal documents created specifically to make a company bulletproof legally speaking.

In laymen’s terms, it’s to stop them from getting sued. Every company must have a privacy policy by law thanks to the introduction of GDPR back in May 2018.

However, because most of us cannot decipher the legal jargon in these very lengthy documents, we tend not to both reading what it says and just click the ‘Agree’ or ‘Accept’ button. 

This, while understandable, is bad practise as you put you and your personal data at greater risk. There might be a clause in that privacy policy you’ve just ‘consented’ to that might compromise your data usage and expose you to fraud. 

Especially in light of scandals such as the Facebook Cambridge Analytica, it’s now more important than ever to care about your digital privacy. 

This includes reading the privacy policies every company offers you. Here are five reasons why you should. 

1) Better Protection

Reading the important parts of any privacy policy will better arm you to protect your data for being used in ways you are not comfortable with.

For example, if you navigate your way through a social media platform’s privacy policy, such as Facebook or Instagram, you may stumble across links to tools you weren’t aware of beforehand to protect your privacy.

In the case with Facebook, you can edit your privacy settings to make your posts private among your friends and not public for everyone to see. You can also adjust the settings so that your face doesn’t get automatically tagged in every photo thanks to their facial recognition software.

Utilising these tools will always guarantee better protection against any data breach and will restrict the use of personal data that you are uncomfortable about any company sharing. 

2) Better Awareness

Getting clued up about GDPR and privacy policies, in general, will allow you to better proceed with better confidence before you ‘consent’ to give away your data.

The only way to do this is to read the privacy policy. It helps if you understand what you’re looking for so that you can find it quicker.

Usually, we don’t have time to skim through the entire document, so make good use of the CTRL+F function and keep an eye out for keyphrases.

Such phrases we recommend should include: “such as”, “not” and “control”. They’ll give you a broader understanding of just how restricted the company is in using your details. 

Better yet, if anything in your search leads you to feel uncomfortable with sharing your data, you always have it in your power to say no. 

3) Control Your Data

Considering the above, it makes it much simpler to control your data by knowing what will be done to it and what you can do to restrict access.

Reading a privacy policy will, in general, make you feel more in control of your data, especially if you find something about personal information you have been specifically aiming to find. 

4) Stay Up-to-Date

Whenever a company makes changes to its privacy policy, you should never ignore this because these updates could extremely relevant to you as a user. 

Every time you receive a notification saying a company had changed its privacy policy, review it and make sure nothing has been compromised.

If there has been a significant change, you want to become aware of it ahead of time before it becomes a potential issue down the line. 

5) Become Smarter

All of this leads to you becoming a lot smarter with your personal data and how you distribute it. It’s always best to become informed with data protection and how companies can use your information. If you want to learn more about GDPR, visit our page for more information. Comply with GDPR today!