I've just re-read the Adsense TOS and saw something about a privacy policy. I'm a bit confused on a few things, so was hoping you guys could clear it up for me? (a) Do you really need a PP? What happens if you don't have one? (b) What should I put in it? It's for proxies mainly? Rep will be added!
It's easy, so you should go ahead and do it. With adsense you will likely not notice a problem if you don't have a privacy policy, but with adwords you are more likely to see the effects reflected in landing page quality score. This can instantly affect your costs for advertising and your ad position. Again, I'm referring to adwords. Google isn't as sensitive about adsense regarding privacy policies, but if your account is reviewed (and it will be reviewed before your first adsense payment is distributed to you) it will count against you. You can find free privacy policies here easily enough. Others will criticize free privacy policies, but they will do the trick as far as google is concerned. You should read it completely, and modifiy it for your site. Contact info with real address and phone also are important from google's perspective. Consult a lawyer to really cover your rear. As a side note: do not copy a privacy policy from another site because in addition to it being 'not cool' and probably illegal, some lawyers have taken to copyrighting their privacy policies and then suing anyone who copies them. They are hoping you will copy it so they can cash in. Good luck. With proxies being a grey area, I would advise complying in any way you can. I have a few low traffic sites without privacy policies, and still get paid from adsense, so I know it isn't always critical.
As far as I know it's required. I got it in place on all of my sites. You can do a quick google search and there are plenty of sites with templates you can use.
(a) Do you really need a PP? >> Adsense says so in TOS What happens if you don't have one? >> Nobody knows for sure, but I put them up, I don't wanna risk losing my account over not having a privacy policy. (b) What should I put in it? It's for proxies mainly? >> It should mention what your site does with personal data gathered from your visitors, + Adsense requests it should specify the use of cookies and webbeacons by third party advertisers on your site and explain your visitors what these are and how they can turn these off in their browsers.