Website Policies and Why They’re Important

The most common website policies are:

What is a Privacy Policy?

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 (PII), and more.

Multiple countries and states have enacted privacy laws that impose heavy fines for not having an up to date compliant Privacy Policy. Some states are proposing laws that can apply to businesses regardless of their location. Several of these proposed laws will enable its citizens to sue businesses of any size, located anywhere.

In short: if you’re collecting PII via a form on your website, or use Google Analytics, and you want to avoid fines and lawsuits, provide a Privacy Policy.

Penalties for non-compliance

The collection of PII is regulated under multiple privacy laws. Since there’s already volumes posted online regarding fines and penalties for non-compliance, I won’t go into detail. Something worth noting about penalties for non-compliance: Fines are per violation, which means that every time someone has visited your site while you were deemed non-compliant, that counts as one violation.

Due to the ever-changing nature of privacy laws, it’s 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. 

Google requires your website to have a Privacy Policy

Outside of the legal requirements, website policies are required to use popular third-party tools. For example, a website utilizing Google Analytics is required by Google to have a Privacy Policy. You can find this requirement within section 7 of Google’s Terms of Service.

What is a Terms of Service Agreement?

Terms of Service, Terms and Conditions, and Terms of Use are often used interchangeably. They are all legal documents/agreements.

A Terms of Service Agreement limits the liability of businesses by stating the rules to using the website. This document also helps protect you from being sued if a user clicks a link to a 3rd party site that is hacked, and then that user gets hacked.

According to the American Bar Association, websites are not required by law to post terms and conditions.

Example disclosures

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 (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) 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.

If you’re not sure whether or not you need a ToS agreement posted on your site, consult with an attorney experienced in this field, and with the laws in your state.

What is a Disclaimer and Why Would You Need One?

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. Most affiliate programs require you to provide a Disclaimer, and consumers want to know when you’re getting paid for links you put on your website.

Provide health and fitness advice? A Disclaimer will protect you in case the user gets injured after following your health and fitness advice.

Provide information that could be seen by others as professional 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.

Cookie Policy and Cookie Consent Banner

Cookies are little snippets of code that get inserted into the user’s browser and device when visiting a website. They can help ensure a website properly functions (aka essential and functional cookies). They can also track website visitors for analytics and advertising purposes (aka marketing cookies). 

Several privacy laws require users to provide consent prior to implementing non-essential cookies on their browsers. This is commonly done through a cookie consent banner, which will ask your website visitors to choose their consent settings. It is important to identify what privacy laws apply to you, and determine if you are required to provide a cookie consent solution on your website along with a Cookie Policy further describing the purpose of each cookie.

How to Obtain Website Policies

If you have the budget, it’s highly recommend that you hire 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, I recommend using a third-party Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions generator service called Termageddon for your website policies. I have a relationship with Termageddon; meaning that I can resell their license to you, if you decide to purchase.

Please note, should you choose to use Termageddon’s services, your relationship will be directly with them, governed solely by their Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Termageddon is a comprehensive website policies generator and will update your policies when privacy laws change or new privacy laws go into effect. They help 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 has been recognized as a trusted tech vendor by the largest international privacy organization in the world (iapp.org).

Termageddon ensures your website policies stay up to date with changes to the law. You will have full access to your website policies with your own Termageddon account. You will be notified when new laws go into effect, when your policies are being updated, or when new disclosures require additional questions that need to be answered.

Can You Use a Free Privacy Policy Generator?

If you’ve done a Google search for a Free Privacy Policy template, you’ve noticed that there are many websites that provide a template for you to fill out with some basic information about your business, and then instantly provide a policy for you to download and use on your site.

The primary downside to using these “free” templates is that they are often not compliant. Another downside is that some templates also contain links within the copy that go to their own website.

When it comes to website policies, there’s no such thing as “One Size Fits All.” Each business may have to comply with a different set of privacy laws, and thus will have different requirements on what specifically needs to be disclosed within their website policies. As an example, if you collect personal information from users in other states or countries, you may be required to comply with those state’s privacy laws as well.

With all that said, even if you:

• remove any/all forms from your website,
• don’t use Google Analytics (or any other method to track visitors to your site),
• don’t use any third-party tools, or
• choose not to have any policies on your website,
• you should at least have a Privacy Policy Page with a very simple statement. People – including legal authorities – will expect to see a Privacy link in the footer of the website.

Some states are proposing laws that will enable their citizens to sue businesses of any size and location simply for having a contact form without a compliant Privacy Policy.

Adding website policies to your site is a decision you will have to make.

Your Website Policies Options

OPTION 1:
Hire an attorney and provide me with your website policies to place on your website.

OPTION 2:
Choose not to have any policies on your website, or research, install, and update your policies, on your own.

As a word of caution: DO NOT copy/paste policies you’ve seen on another website. Just because website policies look the same, and you’re thinking no one reads them anyway, that doesn’t mean you can ignore copyright laws.

OPTION 3:
I set you up with a Termageddon license. There is a one time $100 setup fee to implement the policy pages and Termageddon’s code onto your website. Their license fee is $119/year. There are other policy generators available. However, as mentioned above, it’s recommended that you not use a “Free” policy generator.