Litigation against websites that do not properly disclose their policies is at an all time high. If you don’t have proper and up-to-date pages for your privacy policy and terms of service, you are putting your business at risk - and is an essential part of any Thrive website build.
Your privacy policy and terms of service pages are regulated not only by federal law and regulations but also by the laws of the state(s) in which you operate. These laws change more often than you think. At the moment, there are approximately 20 potential laws making their way through state legislatures around the country.
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Staying on top of these laws, and how they impact what information is required in your privacy policy and terms of service, is critical to making sure your company is protected from fines or lawsuits. It can be a full-time job tracking these bills and understanding their impact.
In fact, it IS a full-time job. Many lawyers are paid lots of money to do just that. It can be overwhelming for small- to medium-sized business owners to keep track of it all.
You may be saying to yourself: "But my website doesn’t ask for payment information."
It can be easy to think that just because your site doesn’t ask for detailed, personally identifiable information like mailing addresses and credit card numbers, that your privacy policy and terms of service pages are exempt from scrutiny.
What you don't know that you don't know is putting your business at risk
These laws all specify that any website that asks for someone’s name and email address is asking for personally identifiable information and needs to have an up-to-date privacy policy and terms of service pages.
That means that if you ask for this information for a newsletter signup or a lead generation download or for any other reason, your website is subject to the same scrutiny as e-commerce websites.
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Violations of these laws can have serious consequences for your business. Some of the newly proposed laws carry a $5,000 fine per website visitor affected. Others would allow citizens in their state to sue businesses across the country if there’s a breach and the privacy policy and terms of services pages are out of date.
The BEST way to protect your business is by ensuring that your privacy policy and terms of service pages are updated and that they stay updated.
The question is how to do that without taking away from your core business. Most small- to medium-sized businesses don’t have the money to keep a lawyer on retainer to monitor these laws and rewrite these pages as needed.
We can help with that. As part of our two Website Care Plans, we include customized Privacy Policy and Terms of Service webpages. We also keep them updated as laws change so you never have to worry about your legal exposure.
There’s a lot to worry about as a small to medium-sized business owner, but your legal exposure because of your privacy policy and terms of service pages shouldn’t be one of them. Let us take care of that for you with our comprehensive Website Care Plan. Not to mention, if you choose one of our results-based Digital Marketing plans, Facebook will require you to have a privacy policy before you can start marketing your business.
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Thrive Design is a customer-centric web design and development agency from Seattle. Contact us today to find out how we can elevate your business online! Find us on Clutch, UpCity, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
