Privacy Policy Generator

A privacy policy that describes data practices you do not actually follow is worse than having no policy at all — it is a documented lie the moment a regulator or a user checks. This tool builds a starting template from the choices you make about your own site. What makes it accurate is you, not the generator.

Building your policy

1. Answer what data you actually collect — forms, comments, account details, uploaded files.
2. Say whether you run analytics, such as Google Analytics or a similar service, and what it tracks.
3. List any third-party services you use that also receive user data — payment processors, email tools, ad networks.
4. Confirm whether you use cookies and what kind — strictly necessary, analytics, or advertising.
5. Generate the text, then read every line and delete anything that does not describe what your site actually does.

What GDPR and CCPA actually require

The General Data Protection Regulation applies to any site processing personal data of people in the EU, regardless of where the business is based. It requires you to state what you collect, why, how long you keep it, and that people can request deletion or a copy of their data. The California Consumer Privacy Act works similarly for California residents, with its own rules on the right to opt out of having data sold.

Neither law cares what your policy document says in isolation. Both care whether your actual practices match it. A beautifully worded policy that promises data is never shared, sitting above a page that quietly loads six ad-tech trackers, is a compliance problem the wording cannot fix.

Sections a real policy needs to cover

• What you collect — name, email, IP address, payment details, uploaded content — be specific, not vague.
• Why you collect it — account creation, order fulfilment, analytics, marketing — each purpose should be named.
• Who else sees it — payment processors, hosting providers, analytics tools, and any advertising partners.
• How long you keep it — even an approximate retention period is better than silence on the point.
• User rights — how someone requests access to, correction of, or deletion of their data, and who to contact.

Where this tool stops and a lawyer starts

For a personal blog with a contact form and Google Analytics, a carefully edited generated policy is genuinely useful and probably sufficient. For a business handling payments, health data, children’s data, or meaningful volumes of EU or California traffic, get a lawyer to review the final document. The cost of that review is small next to the cost of a regulatory complaint, and a lawyer will catch jurisdiction-specific requirements no generic template can anticipate.

Privacy policy generator questions