Privacy policy made simple

Emeritus Professor Margaret Jackson from the Graduate School of Business and Law and Jonathan O’Donnell, from the College of Design and Social Context, have spent three years working with small businesses, government and industry to develop the Simple Privacy tool.

Jackson said while most of Australia’s small businesses were not legally bound to have privacy policies, they should if they are online.

Small businesses make up 96 per cent of Australian businesses.

Simple Privacy will allow businesses to show, and customers to understand, what will happen to personal information collected by their website.

Jackson said it was a reputational risk for companies if they cannot tell people how they will use the information they give them, because they do not to have a privacy policy that is appropriate to their type of business and customers.

“When we went to businesses and asked them where they got the privacy policy on their website from, many said they had gone to Amazon and just copied theirs,” she said.

“That just isn’t appropriate and can lead to problems.”

O’Donnell said the site was a community service for small business because they did not have access to the legal advice of bigger firms.

“Customers don’t read privacy policies all the way through, and if they do, they don’t really understand them.

“They are usually incredibly long and complex documents that may not be legally compliant.

“But if a business is online, then its bank or credit provider will require them to have a privacy policy for their transactions and will have rules about how companies need a privacy policy that is compliant with federal regulations.”

All businesses need to do to use the generator is answer seven questions, and from there an appropriate, legally compliant privacy policy will be generated with an icon and link that can be put on their website, along with a short summary.