I was just pointed to the folks at gVisit.com, who run a clever service using Google Maps to show you the locations of the 20 most recent visitors to your web site.

Setting up is simple: give gVisit your web site’s name and URL, and they give you a little code snippet to paste on whatever web pages you’d like to track. Within an hour, you’re looking at a map of the globe, with Google’s little push-pin-like icons showing you where your visitors are coming from.

Very nice, very simple… but something’s missing here: a privacy policy. What information is it that gVisit is collecting from my visitors? How are they storing it, and for how long? Under what conditions can I ask them to delete it?

Some early adopters aren’t concerned:

Before you get all Privacy Advocate on them, know that they’re using information that is already public. Your IP address (which you give to every web page you connect to already) can be used to find out, roughly, where you are.

True. But now I, the web site you’re visiting, am sharing that information with a third party — and unless I came right out and told you, you wouldn’t know that.

What’s more, gVisit is now in a position to aggregate that information from multiple sites. The more sites use their service, the more complete a picture they get of your surfing day.

Now, I’d be floored if they’re doing anything untoward; this is almost certainly just a genuinely useful little tool. But a little transparency would go a long way — especially because I’d like to be able to assure anyone visiting my site that their privacy is safe in my hands. I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s happening with my site data.

I’ve dropped the code into a single page, by the way. If you want to see it (and appear on my gVisit map, which doesn’t appear to give out any IP information), click here.

Update: Now that’s what I call responsive! Kevin Carey of gVisit has dropped me an e-mail to say,

I am working out a written policy. The main point that I hope people realize is that we do not collect any information about people. Our registration does not require a name or email address, and you cannot get from IP to an actual person’s name.