What does that even mean: website privacy policy strategy – I’ll get to that in a minute, but first let me set the stage.
What is data privacy and why does your business need to be concerned?
The privacy acronym of 2019 was GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), a law that protects data privacy of European Union (EU) citizens. It also affects every American business that does business in the EU. In a nutshell, if your website includes a contact form, a newsletter subscription form, or collects data on visitors via Google Analytics or uses a Facebook remarketing pixel – and your website is accessed by persons from the EU, you need to comply with this law or risk HUGE fines.
In addition, here in the USA, nearly a dozen states have also proposed their own unique privacy bills. Some will allow its citizens to sue businesses for having a contact form without a compliant, up-to-date website privacy policy. As with GDPR in the EU, these laws have long arms, and apply to businesses of any size and location. Several privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), are already in place to protect the personal information of citizens of certain states with fines that can reach $2500 – $7500 per website visitor.
Websites with as little as a contact form are collecting “Personally Identifiable Information” (PII) and will need to provide a compliant Privacy Policy to its users to avoid fines or lawsuits. Also know that this data privacy protection extends beyond your website. If you exhibit at trade shows or vend at events, you may also be collecting PII on entry forms or newsletter subscription forms.
Only the Tip of the Iceberg
In 2020 more states will propose privacy laws. Unfortunately, that’s a given. Some states are even proposing that consumers have the right to sue businesses directly for not having a compliant privacy policy.
There are also six proposed federal privacy bills that aim to centralize privacy requirements across the US. But, some of these bills would override state laws, others would not, further complicating the compliance issue.
Since multiple and varied state (and possibly, federal) laws can apply to any one business, without a plan it’s going to be difficult to keep up.
A Simple Strategy to Keep Your Website Privacy Policy Up-to-Date
And what if ALL of your policy pages automatically updated as needed?
To be proactive on this issue, we’ve partnered up with a privacy policy generator called Termageddon. They make it easy to automatically update your website policies when the laws change (as well as notify you when changes are coming). And they do it at a fraction of the cost of a privacy attorney. In addition to your website privacy policy, you can use this service to set up and maintain other policy pages. Create your disclaimer, terms of service, and EULA (End User License Agreement) pages as part of this package deal.
The license costs $99/year or $10/month. If we set it up for you, we charge an additional, one-time setup fee of $100 to create the policy pages, insert/test the code on your website, and ensure your policies stay up to date with changes to the law.
Termageddon is the only Privacy Policy generator listed as a trusted vendor by the largest privacy organization in the world, iapp.org.
I signed up with them around the middle of last month, and created privacy policy, disclaimer, and terms of service pages for our website. (You’ll find links to them in our website footer, if you’re curious.) It was easy to set-up, and as promised, when CCPA came on the scene, I received a notice to review recommended changes to my privacy policy. I reviewed the recommended verbiage change in my Termageddon dashboard, saved it, and my website immediately updated. Sweet!
To take advantage of this offer, you have two options:
As a Data Privacy Certified Agency Partner with Termageddon, we can set it up for you. We’ll ask you a few questions and then take care of everything on your behalf. Please get in touch with your request via our contact form to get the ball rolling.- Or, if you manage your own website and prefer to work directly with Termageddon, please use this link: http://app.termageddon.com?fp_ref=0to60 (Yes, that’s an affiliate link. There’s no additional cost to you, but I will earn a small commission on your purchase.)
