As a community manager, you would always be worried about the security of your well-established community. You may be implementing various strategies to safeguard your user’s data and information. The most significant thing is to set out rules and guidelines to keep your users engaged. It is because you are in long-term business and are yet to achieve some important milestones. You might be aware of data privacy. It is the security methods that deal with the administration of data. For this, you need to specify a set of rules around your community. These rules and guidelines keep your audience comfortable and occupied.
The so-called community guidelines are the legal documents and texts that people usually ignore. But as an admin or proprietor, you must have short and simple guidelines for your community. Your community guidelines somewhere build trust among the members and provide them a secure online space. Your data privacy mainly concerns with the following:
- Sharing of data with the third party
- How and where is the data stored?
- Regulatory guidelines and restrictions such as GDPR & COPPA
Today we are here to guide you on the importance of data privacy and how to improve it. Data security and confidentiality connect each other and are essential for every business on the web.
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Importance Of Data Privacy
For any online business, data accounts as the most significant component. With the increase in the data economy, data collection, usage, and sharing have become a golden opportunity for companies. The market kings such as Facebook, Google, Amazon have built enormous domains by adapting the data economy.
As privacy has become a significant concern, the government in different nations has implemented various acts and regulations concerning data security. And it has become mandatory for companies to lock all their user data under a tight security wall.
Data Privacy vs. Data Security
Data privacy and data security are connected but yet have a difference.
- Data security means safeguarding users’ data from being misused.
- Data privacy is the collection, sharing, and use of users’ data.
A successful company might encrypt, restrict and monitor data through a system called personally identifiable information (PII). But if the PII is without consent, it is none other than violating data privacy, regulations, and guidelines.
Legal principles for collecting, storing, and using personal data
Every time a company collects, stores, or uses users’ data, it should justify the following reasons.
Legal concerns
You can use your user’s data only if it matches your community’s legitimate interest. It means you must only use specific data required to run your society. Further, people must have an option to remove their data anytime they want. Remember, whenever you use your user data, it should not disrupt their rights and freedoms.
Consent
Having consent is the most crucial part. Before collecting your user data, you as a company must provide them the reasons and purpose for collecting detailed data. For instance, if you ask people for their address, it must be for sending a newsletter. Make them ensure that you won’t use their address for any other purpose. Always provide them the reasons for which you are collecting and using their data.
Also, keep a record of different consent given by people. Never pre assume the consent and wait for them to click on the checkbox.
Note – For consent regarding children below 13 must be provided by their parents.
Contract
Companies and organizations can also use users’ data as a contract. Well, it doesn’t need to be in a written form. A warranty is a type of data that users provide to companies in exchange for a product or service. A company must erase the user data once the contract gets completed.
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Say you run a clubhouse and sell t-shirts to your customers. People will provide you their apparel size while ordering their t-shirts. Naturally, you will use this data to manufacture t-shirts for the requested size. Once the order gets completed, you should erase the data as it is of no use.
Data Privacy Laws
It is good to have your guideline, but you must follow specific guidelines implemented by your government. Say an organization deals with products or services used by children below the age of 13. But for obvious reasons, it needs to follow the guidelines set by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by the US, 2000.
COPPA commands such companies to have the consent of the parents before collecting children’s data. In regards to this, most of the social networking platforms limit users below 13.
After the rise in cyber cases and data breaches, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came as a new regulation for data privacy. GDPR is for the European nations recently formed in 2018. The companies operating in Europe (also the US-based firms) need to humble and complain while collecting, sharing, and using users’ data.
Safe Community Guidelines
Being a community manager, you must know your organization’s privacy and security guidelines. It is because your users can anytime ask you to change/manage their data. Enlist the primary approaches to build trust around your community. At least link a line or word to your privacy policy section. You may also take the help of your legal committee for better guidance.
At a minimum, your community should have information on the following:
- Sexual Content ( G, R, PG, or X)
- Scams
- Violence, harassment, bullying, hate speech, or illegal actions
- Doxxing ( sharing information with third parties)
- Acceptable content and its language
- Dos and Don’ts
- Consequences in case of guidelines violation
A better approach is to have feedback from the users who get connected at the early stage. Besides, you can use a community-building engagement tool. Feedbacks and suggestions from members would help you a lot in setting your guidelines.
Conclusion
The Internet is dynamic and will keep on changing with time. For creating and operating a safe community, contact us at Wbcom Designs. Our professional and dedicated staff is always there to help you.
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