A privacy policy is the cornerstone of a company’s responsibility to its website visitors. It explains what information is collected and why, how it is used and how it will be protected.
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A privacy policy is a legal document which informs the users of an organization’s policies on the collection, retention, use and disclosure of personal information. It is usually written by an attorney specifically for the company it serves and made available to customers on request.
In this section, I will examine a privacy policy of ClickBank – what they do, what they don’t do, and how they are protected themselves.
The new ClickBank Privacy Policy represents a joint effort by all of our stakeholders, from company management and the Board of Directors to members of the Customer Service team.
It’s important for brands to be transparent about their policies. What does the ClickBank Privacy Policy say?
The policy is pretty straightforward. It states that it collects information such as shipping address, email address and credit card number. There are also other pages where it outlines how they will use that information and how they share it with third parties like Google Analytics or Google AdWords.
It should be noted that ClickBank has been in business for over 16 years and has a 126 million-strong customer base – so you’ll find that their privacy policy is more than capable of handling any sensitive information you share with them.
In December 2015, a federal judge ordered ClickBank to refund $17 million to its customers who had purchased the digital products on the site because they failed to provide consumers their promised refunds. This was due to a failure of ClickBank’s online privacy policy. The company did not make it clear that it would automatically collect and store consumers’ credit card information, including numbers, security codes and names.
The court then required that ClickBank provide a clear summary of how its policies work on the site if it wants customers to be able to opt out. The fact that Clickbank had not properly disclosed this information in its privacy policy was key in the decision made by Federal Judge Paul A. Crotty who called it “unconscionable.”
