Privacy Policies for a Small Business
Privacy Policies for a Small Business
Get Protection
There’s a lot of concern about consumer privacy today, and recent laws meant to protect privacy are an issue for business website owners. This page explains what website policies are and how you can get coverage to limit your liability. These are the three most common policies found on websites:
Please note: We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. But we believe this information is important so we ask all of our clients to sign a waiver, acknowledging that we have provided you with this information and either declining or accepting this offer.
1. 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 and more.
Privacy Policies protect consumers, not businesses.
The locations where your subscribers and clients live each have their own privacy laws that businesses have to comply with. Current examples in California alone:
- The California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA)
- The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
Fines start at $2,500 per violation
(per website visitor)
Privacy laws are different for each country and state. Examples of current laws:
• European Union • United Kingdom • Canada
• Australia • California • Delaware
• Nevada • Colorado • Virginia
How will you keep your Privacy Policy current?
Even if you have a generic Privacy Policy of some kind, how will you know when it needs to be updated? Several states have proposed privacy bills, all with different requirements and imposing heavy fines on businesses failing to publish privacy disclosures. Here’s a State privacy bill tracker of new privacy bills that have been proposed.
2. What Is a Terms of Service Agreement?
A Terms of Service Agreement limits the liability of businesses by stating the rules to using the website. 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.
3. What is a Disclaimer?
A Disclaimer is a document that helps limit your responsibilities and liabilities for your website in certain circumstances.
4. How to Get Website Policies
Hire a Lawyer
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.
Use an Auto-Updating Policies Service
If you don’t have the budget to hire a privacy lawyer for your website policies and keep them current as the laws change, we recommend using Termageddon, an auto-updating privacy policy tool.
Benefits of Termageddon:
-
- Personalized Policies
It’s a comprehensive website policies generator that can be configured to fit your industry and your individual business, consistent with the laws that apply in the appropriate geographic locations. - Always Current
Termageddon will update your policies when privacy laws change or new privacy laws go into effect. This helps you stay compliant and avoid privacy-related fines and lawsuits, at a fraction of the cost of a lawyer. - Recognized by Privacy Professionals
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 International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), the largest international privacy organization in the world.
- Personalized Policies
Options for How to Implement Termageddon Policies:
-
- Subscribe to Termageddon and publish policies yourself
Subscribe to Termageddon directly, go through their intake process to answer questions about your business so they can generate appropriate policies for you. Then create three new policy web pages, install their code on your website, test it, integrate the pages into your site so people can find them, and manage updates and communication with the policies service yourself.
OR - Subscribe to Termageddon and we will publish policies for you
Subscribe to Termageddon directly, go through their intake process to answer questions about your business so they can generate appropriate policies for you. For a one-time $200 setup fee we will create three new policy web pages, install their code on your website, test it, integrate the pages into your site so people can find them. You would manage updates and communication with the policies service yourself after that.
OR - Subscribe to our Premium Level Maintenance Plan
We will work with you to answer Termageddon’s questions about your business so they can generate appropriate policies. As part of your white glove maintenance plan, we will cover the cost with no setup fee — to create three new policy web pages, install their code on your website, test it, integrate the pages into your site so people can find them, and manage updates and communication with the policies service for you.
- Subscribe to Termageddon and publish policies yourself
Notice to Clients
Because of the liability risk to clients
and to us as your website provider,
we ask clients to sign a waiver to acknowledge
that we have informed you of this risk.
Subscribe to Termageddon here with promo code CLARITYWEB to get a discount if you’re not a client of ours or you choose to manage your website policies on your own outside of our maintenance plans.
Termageddon’s solution has been vetted by IAPP, the world’s largest global information privacy community, and is the best we’ve found. We are a Termageddon affiliate because we like their solution, we’ve seen business owners subjected to legal threat by a website visitor, and we want to help protect you from that experience. If you subscribe through our Premium Level maintenance plan, we cover the cost and labor to implement your privacy policy and maintain your policies pages.
See details here about our Premium Website Maintenance Plan that includes website policies.