Final answer:
A Privacy Policy is a document containing a company's procedures to manage private information. It's essential due to increasing cyber data issues with privacy and the implementation of laws like COPPA and GDPR to regulate how personal data is managed.
Step-by-step explanation:
A Privacy Policy is a set of procedures and philosophies that a company adopts to handle individually identifiable private information. With increasing cyber data issues with privacy, both state and federal laws in the United States, such as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), have been implemented to regulate private companies’ storage and use of personal data. Furthermore, other jurisdictions like the European Union have enacted even more robust data protection laws, as exemplified by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which strictly regulates the collection and processing of citizens' data by both private businesses and government agencies.
In the wake of large-scale data breaches at various organizations, protecting online privacy and security has become a significant concern. It is vital for individuals to protect their data by becoming familiar with privacy rights, reading privacy policies, and practicing safe digital behavior to guard against identity theft and unauthorized data usage.