Proposed guidelines for website data privacy policies and an application thereof

Abstract

Business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce websites have recently increased in South Africa. The extent of addressing privacy requirements in B2C e-commerce websites is still in its infancy in South Africa with the Protection of Personal Information Act which only came into effect recently. A scoping literature review was conducted to define a holistic set of privacy policy guidelines for websites. In total, 14 privacy policy guidelines for websites were identified to aid website owners in developing their online data privacy policies. The research design further included a sample of ten popular South African B2C e-commerce website privacy policies using an embedded single-case study design to illustrate the application of the guidelines and to establish the extent of the content of the sample of website privacy policies in terms of the proposed privacy policy guidelines. The findings indicated that the website privacy policies did not fully address the proposed guidelines. The proposed privacy policy guidelines for websites provide website owners with a way to assess and improve their privacy policy content to contribute to compliance with data privacy requirements and to build consumer trust.