Confidentiality agreement for the users of a website’s personal data

Visiting a website, like visiting a physical location, leaves “marks” of presence. In this case, the pages accessed, clicked on, emails sent or forms filled out on the website are cases of interaction with the website, by the user. Like a fingerprint identifying each user, this trail of information and data collected must be protected and the rules of that protection must be transparent to the user.

What Does A Confidentiality Agreement Do?

The purpose of a confidentiality agreement or a website privacy policy is to inform readers and users of the site about the fact that their personal data may be collected through the use of cookies and that they are complicit in agreeing to this usage by visiting the site. It also, broadly, explains how the data will be protected and not shared, usually conforming to the prevailing “Data Act” of the country of origin. There will also be a larger part of this statement of confidentiality that explains third party liability. The practice of a confidentiality agreement will also make effort to define the scope of the collection, the security surrounding access as well as the extent of the site’s compliance, should governments come knocking or legislation surrounding data protection change.

Various Parts of a Website Privacy Policy

The extent of the detail as well as the various clauses that comprise a confidentiality agreement really varies according to the function of the site. For example, a site built for casual gaming would collect different kinds of information than a news site because users are heading to each for different purposes and might encounter different applications on each of these sites. An online confidentiality agreement would also include sections on site usage and identification relating to cookies, personal information relating to minors, Google Analytics’ automatically collected data, international data transfer and/or non-disclosure. These various aspects fall under a broad umbrella, up top, of a pledge of privacy and intended use of collected data.

Big data is not just an issue with private companies: the concern is that big data kept concentrated in the hands of big social media sites or search engines can make these companies a ripe target for government surveillance and coercion. This added layer of invasion would be part and parcel of national surveillance by governmental organizations that purport to use data to identify patterns in the matters of national security. But it’s all too easy to take that same data and use it for discrimination or citizen targeting instead.