• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Noulakaz

Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

  • Home
  • About
  • People
    • Christina & Avinash Meetoo
    • Avinash Meetoo
    • Christina Meetoo
    • Anya Meetoo
    • Kyan Meetoo
  • General
    • News
    • Mauritius
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Business
    • Travel
  • Computing
    • Apple
    • Linux
    • LUGM
    • Programming
    • Web
    • Technology
    • Knowledge Seven
  • Entertainment
    • Music
    • Movies
    • Photography
    • Sports

A privacy policy for Google Adsense

20 July 2008 By Avinash Meetoo 10 Comments

A lot of bloggers I know display Google advertisements on their respective blogs in order to earn some money. Naturally, I also have two Google advertisements on every page of this blog for exactly the same reason… (I’d like to point out that I have not received any cheque from Google up to now.)

This service from Google is called Google Adsense.

I got a comment today from Josh who told me that I need to have a privacy page on this blog to comply with Google’s Adsense latest Terms and Conditions. Using Google (what else?), I discovered a blog entry by Jennifer Slegg explaining in details the changes brought by Google. The most relevant paragraph is:

You must have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy that clearly discloses that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users’ browser, or using web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads being served on your website. Your privacy policy should also include information about user options for cookie management.

The idea is to make explicit that Google uses web beacons aka web bugs and cookies to track visitors. I suppose this brings some peace of mind to Google lawyers.

Then I realized…

This blog, noulakaz.net, is in violation with the terms and conditions and Google might terminate my Adsense account anytime. Fortunately, Jennifer Slegg has also thoughtfully written a sample privacy policy which she has made public. I read it and realized it was much too long for my blog. With some cut and paste, I finally came up with:

The privacy of visitors to noulakaz.net is important to me. Like most other websites, I collect and use the data contained in log files. I do use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit my blog. To support my weblog, I also use third party advertisements which may use cookies and web beacons. You can choose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies in your browser settings or by managing security preferences. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with noulakaz.net as well as other websites.

Nice and compact! I’ve added this to my About page.

 

 

 

15 Common Mistakes

Not having a privacy policy was a mistake. But it’s arguably a cosmetic mistake. The baddest mistake as far as Google Adsense is concerned is for someone to click on his own Adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason (e.g. click on my links coz i need to pay for my hosting.) I came across this list of 15 Common Mistakes that violate Google Adsense Terms & Conditions and I would strongly advise all bloggers using Adsense to go through it once or twice.

Addendum

The “Software Failure / Guru Meditation” picture shown above should bring tears to those happy few who had an Amiga 15-20 years ago… To the rest, this is what we got when the Amiga crashed. No blue screen of death. No core dump. Instead, we had a flashing Guru Meditation message. People were cool at that time…

Filed Under: News, Technology, Web

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Anguish says

    20 July 2008 at 19:52

    Should be careful with google…lol

  2. selven says

    20 July 2008 at 20:47

    I get my google cheques on time :D

    hmm reading this entry i realize that its not much of a change, since back then when adsense was just launched, it was pretty much the same tihng [i was concerned when it comes to money, so i read every single lines of that terms and conditions :p]

    thanks for the info about the tracking

  3. Avish says

    21 July 2008 at 19:26

    @ selven: At which bank did you changed your google cheq?? MCB telling me it gonna take 2 months!!!! to verify tou sa…and credit the money to my account! :-(

    2 months!!!!…..its been 2 weeks la….6 weeks to go lol…

  4. Ketwaroo D. Yaasir says

    22 July 2008 at 04:59

    I told you they were evil. That’s nothing new though. They change their privacy policy every now and then.

    anyway, you should keep your privacy policy in a separate page.

    like /privacy-policy or about/privacy-policy

    and if you use a sitemap plugin, make sure it lists that page too. just in case… or the hoodoo secret site checking algorithm google uses to check if sites are adsense compliant will smote you.

  5. Ketwaroo D. Yaasir says

    22 July 2008 at 06:53

    I meant, they change their Terms of Service every now and then.

    and I read your about page. that can’t be all, can it? what about the cookie data wordpress sets? the Tempus Fugit plugin sets some data for the subscriptions, right? You should mention things like that. As far as I know, a privacy policy should also mention what user data is kept on server/set in cookies and how it is (or is not) used. Not just for the benefit of the visitors but for you, the webmaster, as well.

    probably should make it more visible too. like links in the footer area. You really have to be careful. A lot of publishers are in semi-permanent violation of google’s evolving ToS. many of them don’t get kicked but many of them do.

    Welcome to the Dark Side of Google btw.

  6. carrotmadman6 says

    22 July 2008 at 07:45

    @Avish
    2 months? You are sure? Well, actually I don’t know how much time it takes to credit it, but it’s definitely less than 2 months… ;)

    PS. My previous comment was spammed?? :|

  7. Avish says

    22 July 2008 at 11:25

    Yea….they said 8 weeks environ….thats 2 months :-\ I am setting bidvertiser on test on my blog for abt 2 weeks la….mwena $2 lor bidvertiser…so wanna make 10 unfoi so I can grab it lol…then i’ll set adsense again.

  8. selven says

    24 July 2008 at 10:45

    @ selven: At which bank did you changed your google cheq?? MCB telling me it gonna take 2 months!!!! to verify tou sa…and credit the money to my account! :-(

    2 months!!!!…..its been 2 weeks la….6 weeks to go lol…

    I deposit my cheques at MCB only, usually its a matter of 1 or 2 weeks or less (i don’t remember the exact cycle), but it is not much.
    You sure you didn’t dressed up as a drug dealer or something similar when you went to deposit your cheque? :D

  9. Skywalker says

    15 September 2008 at 17:51

    Thank you very much. I’ve used it and adjusted a bit to fit on my own site. Thank you again. :D

  10. avinash says

    16 September 2008 at 12:29

    You’re welcome :-)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Our Personal Websites

Avinash Meetoo
Christina Meetoo
Anya Meetoo
Kyan Meetoo

Related Posts

  • What is the fair use policy?
  • Google Opening the Social Graph
  • Guru Meditation
  • Google G-Mauritius Day 9 in the news

Random Posts

  • Good luck Ramon…
  • A few places left for Linux Level 1 training
  • Farewell Raymond “Red” Reddington
  • The Focusrite 2i2 audio interface and its free plugins

Archives

  • May 2025 (2)
  • April 2025 (4)
  • January 2025 (3)
  • December 2024 (2)
  • November 2024 (2)
  • October 2024 (3)
  • September 2024 (7)
  • August 2024 (1)
  • July 2024 (1)
  • June 2024 (2)
  • May 2024 (3)
  • January 2024 (2)
  • December 2023 (1)
  • October 2023 (1)
  • September 2023 (4)
  • August 2023 (3)
  • July 2023 (1)
  • June 2023 (4)
  • May 2023 (1)
  • April 2023 (1)
  • March 2023 (5)
  • February 2023 (1)
  • December 2022 (1)
  • November 2022 (1)
  • October 2022 (4)
  • August 2022 (4)
  • July 2022 (3)
  • June 2022 (5)
  • May 2022 (5)
  • January 2022 (3)
  • December 2021 (2)
  • November 2021 (1)
  • October 2021 (1)
  • September 2021 (4)
  • August 2021 (2)
  • July 2021 (14)
  • May 2021 (2)
  • April 2021 (4)
  • March 2021 (9)
  • February 2021 (2)
  • January 2021 (1)
  • October 2020 (1)
  • September 2020 (1)
  • August 2020 (2)
  • July 2020 (5)
  • June 2020 (3)
  • May 2020 (5)
  • April 2020 (6)
  • March 2020 (2)
  • February 2020 (2)
  • January 2020 (2)
  • October 2019 (1)
  • September 2019 (2)
  • July 2019 (2)
  • June 2019 (1)
  • May 2019 (3)
  • April 2019 (2)
  • March 2019 (1)
  • February 2019 (1)
  • January 2019 (3)
  • December 2018 (1)
  • October 2018 (3)
  • August 2018 (2)
  • July 2018 (2)
  • June 2018 (1)
  • May 2018 (2)
  • April 2018 (1)
  • February 2018 (1)
  • December 2017 (1)
  • October 2017 (1)
  • September 2017 (1)
  • August 2017 (1)
  • July 2017 (1)
  • May 2017 (4)
  • April 2017 (3)
  • March 2017 (4)
  • February 2017 (5)
  • January 2017 (3)
  • October 2016 (1)
  • September 2016 (1)
  • August 2016 (4)
  • July 2016 (1)
  • June 2016 (1)
  • March 2016 (3)
  • February 2016 (3)
  • January 2016 (1)
  • December 2015 (1)
  • November 2015 (2)
  • September 2015 (1)
  • August 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (1)
  • December 2014 (1)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • October 2014 (1)
  • March 2014 (2)
  • February 2014 (3)
  • December 2013 (1)
  • October 2013 (1)
  • September 2013 (1)
  • August 2013 (1)
  • July 2013 (1)
  • June 2013 (2)
  • May 2013 (1)
  • March 2013 (3)
  • January 2013 (2)
  • December 2012 (3)
  • November 2012 (4)
  • September 2012 (3)
  • August 2012 (2)
  • July 2012 (3)
  • June 2012 (2)
  • May 2012 (1)
  • April 2012 (2)
  • February 2012 (1)
  • January 2012 (4)
  • December 2011 (2)
  • November 2011 (1)
  • October 2011 (4)
  • September 2011 (2)
  • August 2011 (1)
  • July 2011 (2)
  • June 2011 (4)
  • April 2011 (7)
  • March 2011 (2)
  • February 2011 (1)
  • January 2011 (3)
  • November 2010 (3)
  • October 2010 (1)
  • September 2010 (2)
  • August 2010 (4)
  • July 2010 (2)
  • June 2010 (1)
  • May 2010 (3)
  • April 2010 (4)
  • March 2010 (3)
  • February 2010 (3)
  • January 2010 (5)
  • December 2009 (2)
  • November 2009 (3)
  • October 2009 (1)
  • September 2009 (5)
  • August 2009 (3)
  • July 2009 (1)
  • June 2009 (3)
  • May 2009 (2)
  • April 2009 (7)
  • March 2009 (12)
  • February 2009 (10)
  • January 2009 (5)
  • December 2008 (4)
  • November 2008 (11)
  • October 2008 (6)
  • September 2008 (7)
  • August 2008 (3)
  • July 2008 (8)
  • June 2008 (6)
  • May 2008 (5)
  • April 2008 (7)
  • March 2008 (6)
  • February 2008 (3)
  • January 2008 (6)
  • December 2007 (11)
  • November 2007 (10)
  • October 2007 (7)
  • September 2007 (9)
  • August 2007 (3)
  • July 2007 (7)
  • June 2007 (8)
  • May 2007 (14)
  • April 2007 (11)
  • March 2007 (18)
  • February 2007 (14)
  • January 2007 (15)
  • December 2006 (16)
  • November 2006 (10)
  • October 2006 (7)
  • September 2006 (8)
  • August 2006 (8)
  • July 2006 (6)
  • June 2006 (4)
  • May 2006 (13)
  • April 2006 (10)
  • March 2006 (11)
  • February 2006 (7)
  • January 2006 (14)
  • December 2005 (8)
  • November 2005 (6)
  • October 2005 (7)
  • September 2005 (2)
  • August 2005 (6)
  • July 2005 (2)
  • June 2005 (6)
  • May 2005 (15)
  • April 2005 (12)
  • March 2005 (3)
  • February 2005 (8)
  • January 2005 (3)
  • December 2004 (1)
  • November 2004 (2)
  • October 2004 (2)
  • September 2004 (3)
  • August 2004 (3)
  • July 2004 (3)
  • June 2004 (3)
  • May 2004 (6)
  • April 2004 (10)
  • March 2004 (12)
Creative Commons License This work is licensed by Avinash Meetoo under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License.