Here’s one of the lesser known hats you need to wear as a microISV: Privacy protector.
Your customers want and need your assurance that any information they provide you will not get sold to someone else. Further, they want to know what - if any - cookies you put on their machine. Most of all, they want to know their credit card information is going to be properly and only properly used.

Handling credit cards is a subject for another post; for this post, let’s focus on creating and implementing a privacy policy.

There’s two parts to implementing your microISVs privacy policy: finding a good template to use, and then actually keeping the promises your privacy policy makes.

Here’s 7 sites (5 for U.S. microISVs, one for the U.K. and one from an international organization) to get you started:

• How to Construct Your Privacy Policy
• Free Privacy Policy Sample Template
• Privacy Policy Example
• Privacy Policy Template
• Sample Privacy Notice
• [U.K] Website disclaimer (version 2.0)
• [Global] OECD Privacy Statement Generator

If you’d like to dig a little deeper into the subject, these two links should help:

• Internet privacy from Wikipedia
• ‘La difference’ is stark in EU, U.S. privacy laws

Adding a privacy policy to your microISV’s web site is easy - just remember you are making a public promise to protect the privacy of your customers, prospective customers and visitors. Make the small extra effort to ensure your deeds match your words!

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