A Privacy Policy helps website owners comply with privacy laws by providing specific disclosure
requirements such as how their website collects, uses, and discloses personally identifiable
information and more.
Today’s modern websites are built to provide a great user experience and motivate prospective customers to reach out and inquire about what you have to offer. This is done through the use of tools such as contact forms, website analytics, and more.
Contact forms ask users to submit their ‘name’ and ‘email’, which are examples of personally identifiable information. When a website uses analytics, it collects each visitor’s IP address and shares that personally identifiable information with third-party data analytics providers. These are just a few examples of the many ways websites collect and share personally identifiable information.
The collection of personally identifiable information is regulated under multiple privacy laws. For example, in the US, there are four state privacy laws that can apply to businesses, regardless of their location, and fines for non-compliance start at $2,500 per “infringement” (per website visitor). Each of these privacy laws has specific disclosure requirements that have to be added to your Privacy Policy to be compliant.
On top of that, over two dozen privacy bills have been proposed on a state-level, each with their
own unique disclosure requirements and penalties for not complying. Some of these bills will
enable citizens to sue businesses (of any size or location) for collecting their personally
identifiable information without an up to date and compliant Privacy Policy. Due to the everchanging nature of privacy laws, we recommend that you not only have a comprehensive
Privacy Policy in place but that you also develop a strategy to keep your policies up to date
when these laws are amended or when new laws are implemented.
A Terms of Service Agreement limits the liability of businesses by stating the rules to using the
website.
third-party links: When a website offers links to third-party websites, a Terms of Service can
help explain to users that the business is not responsible if a user clicks those links. So, if a
third-party link brings a user to a hacked website, the Terms of Service disclosure can help
prevent you from being sued.
DMCA Notice: A Terms of Service agreement can also provide what’s called a DMCA notice,
which helps prevent a business from being sued by providing contact information in case the
website is accidentally using copyrighted material (like images or content).
There are many additional disclosures that a Terms of Service can make, but these two are the
most popular and are easy ways to protect your website and your business.
A Disclaimer is a document that helps limit your responsibilities and liabilities for your website in certain circumstances
Advertise third-party products or services? A Disclaimer will help you protect yourself if a
user clicks on the third-party advertisement and gets a virus, is somehow injured by the product
or service, or is not happy with the third-party product or service
Sell or display health products? A Disclaimer will help you protect yourself in this case if the
health products do not work as they should, do not deliver the results that were expected or if
the user gets injured by the health products.
Participate in an affiliate program? An affiliate program is a program whereby you list a
particular link on your website and, if the user clicks on that link or purchases the products that
the link displays, you receive money from the manufacturer of that product. A Disclaimer will
help you comply with the affiliate program’s Terms of Service as most affiliate programs require
you to provide a Disclaimer and will help you keep your user’s trust.
Provide health and fitness advice? A Disclaimer will protect you in case the user gets injured
after following your health and fitness advice, much like the beginning of those exercise videos
that you will watch in January of next year.
Provide information that could be seen by others as legal advice? A Disclaimer will protect
you here by stating that there is no attorney client relationship here and that this advice is not
legal advice, thus protecting you in case something goes wrong.
If you have the budget, we recommend hiring a lawyer that focuses on privacy law to write your
website policies, monitor privacy laws, and update your policies when the laws change or when
new laws go into effect. If you do not have the budget to hire a privacy lawyer for your website
policies, we recommend using Termageddon.
Termageddon is a comprehensive website policies generator and will update your policies when
privacy laws change or new privacy laws go into effect, helping you stay compliant and avoid
privacy related fines and lawsuits, and they do it at a fraction of the cost of a lawyer. Although
Termageddon is a technology company (not a legal services provider), it was founded by a
privacy and contracts lawyer and the tool has been recognized as a trusted tech vendor by the
largest international privacy organization in the world (iapp.org).
If Termageddon sounds like a good solution for your business, the license costs $99/year, and
we are charging a one-time setup fee of $100 to create the policy webpages, insert/test the
code and ensure your policies stay up to date with changes to the law. You will have full access
to your policies with your own Termageddon account, and you will be notified when new laws go
into effect and when your policies are being updated or when new disclosures require additional
questions that need to be answered.
Adding policies to your website is a decision you will have to make. Please review and
sign the Website Policies Waiver on the next page, confirming that you have received our
notice on the legal requirements of Privacy Policies and the additional protections of
Terms of Service and Disclaimer agreements.
