Consent and privacy
Put a privacy notice on the same page as the form
The notice should describe the fields on that page, who receives them, and how to ask a question. A footer link to the wrong policy does not count.
A privacy notice explains what happens to the information a person just gave you. On a landing page, the notice has to be about that page. A link in the footer to a corporate policy written for a mobile app, a hiring portal, and a newsletter, with two sentences about “contact forms” buried in the middle, is not good enough. The reader is deciding whether to type a phone number. They need a short, true account of that phone number’s path, available before they type it, written in the same vocabulary as the form.
This article is about the shape of that account. It is not a privacy-law checklist, and it does not tell you which statute applies to your business. Different countries and states impose different duties, and some campaigns need a fuller policy than a landing page can hold. The structural rule still helps: the notice a person can open from the form should match the form. If the long policy and the form disagree, fix the disagreement. Do not hope nobody compares them.
Name the information on this page
List the categories you actually collect in the form, in ordinary words. If the fields are name, mobile number, ZIP code, and a short description of the job, those are the categories. Do not add “device identifiers, precise location, and demographic inferences” because a template included them and you might add a pixel later. Describe the page you are publishing today. If you add a measurement tag that collects more, update the notice in the same change. The notice is part of the release, not a document from last fiscal year that happens to be linked.
Say whether the form is required for the thing you are offering. On a request-a-call page, the phone number is required because there is no call without it. Say that plainly. Also say what you will not do if you can say it truly. A strong, concrete sentence is “We use this number to respond to this request. We do not sell the contents of this form as a marketing list.” Only write that sentence if it is true of the systems behind the page. If a vendor can use the submission for its own advertising, you cannot claim otherwise because the thought is unpleasant. Unpleasant accuracy beats a comforting falsehood.
Name who handles the submission
Identify the business responsible for the page, with a way to reach a human about privacy questions. A brand nickname with no legal name and no email is not an identity. If a service provider hosts the form or stores the submissions on your instructions, you can say that a vendor processes the request for you and that you remain responsible for the campaign. Name the role. You do not need to dump a vendor inventory into the paragraph, but you do need a path: an email or a form that a person can use to ask what you hold about them. Monitor the path. A privacy address that nobody reads is a prop.
If more than one business will receive the raw submission for its own purposes, the notice has to say so before the button. “We may share with trusted partners” is the kind of sentence that tries to avoid this moment. Replace it with the real pattern: shared with these kinds of companies, for this reason, or not shared except with vendors who host the form for us. Then make the systems match the sentence. Sharing settings you do not understand are how notices go stale on the day they are published.
Say how long you keep a request
You may not have a poetic answer, and you do not need one. “We keep request records so we can respond, handle a complaint, and meet our own record-keeping, and we delete or de-identify them when that need ends” is a grown-up sentence if your retention practice really works that way. “We keep data forever in case it is useful” should push you to decide a limit, not to hide the practice under softer words. If different fields have different lives, say so only if you actually separate them. A notice should not describe a retention program that exists only in the notice.
Security deserves one concrete sentence, not a badge. “Submissions are stored in an account only our staff can log in to, over encrypted connections” is meaningful if it is accurate. “Bank-level security” is not meaningful. Do not display a padlock icon you drew yourself. Use the real transport security of the page, described in the operations guide on HTTPS, and do not overclaim what encryption does. Encryption in transit does not make a careless export harmless. Say the true control, not the mythical one.
Put the link where the decision is
Place a visible text link beside the form, labeled “Privacy notice” or “How we use this form,” and make sure it opens the notice that matches this campaign. Repeat it near the button if the form is long. A footer link alone is easy to miss on a phone and easy to point at the parent company’s general policy by mistake. Check the destination on the live URL, not in the draft. Redirects and template defaults have a habit of aiming a “privacy” link at a homepage.
If you operate several campaigns, give each page its own notice or a notice with a section that is obviously about that page. A single mega-policy can work if the campaign section is specific and easy to find. It fails when every campaign links to the top of a document that starts with cookies for a different site. The reader should not have to discover whether they are in the right section. The link should land them there.
A notice audit
- The categories in the notice match the fields on the form, including any new tag you added.
- The business name and a monitored contact path are visible.
- Sharing is described the way the systems actually share, including “we do not sell this form” only if that is true.
- Retention is something your team could carry out.
- The link beside the form opens the right notice on the live domain.
- The consent paragraph and the notice do not describe different channels.
- Someone who did not write the page can explain it in a minute.
When the notice and the form tell the same story, you have done the part this guide can help with. You still need advice on which disclosures your campaign requires and how to honor access or deletion requests. Write the true version first so that advice has something solid to work on. A lawyer cannot repair a notice that describes a business you do not run.