Privacy Policy FAQ’s

Terms of Service is a great way to answer frequently asked customer and visitor questions, and protect yourself from liability.

Terms of Service (TOS) provides the following:

• If you sell products and services, a TOS provides information on refunds, order cancellations and returns. This will help answer customer questions and will help take them further down the path to actually buying from you;
• It will protect your intellectual property by making sure that everyone who accesses your website knows that your logo, name, and content are yours; and
• If you have links to third party websites on your website (e.g. social media links), a TOS will help protect you from liability in the event that the user gets a virus or malware from that third party website.

You need a Disclaimer statement if you do any of the following on your website:

• Display advertisements;
• Display or sell health products (e.g. vitamins and supplements);
• Participate in affiliate programs (e.g. Amazon Affiliates);
• Provide health and fitness advice or tips; or
• Provide any information that could be seen as legal advice.

If you do any of the above, a Disclaimer statement will help you to provide required disclosures, allow you to participate in affiliate programs (some programs will require you to have a Disclaimer to participate), and will reduce your liability in case something goes wrong.

You need an End User License Agreement (EULA) if you are licensing software that a user can download. An End User Licence Agreement will help you with the following:

• Limit your liability in case a user gets a virus or is otherwise injured by using your software;
• Help protect your income stream by making it clear that the software license may not be shared with others; and
• Protect your intellectual property by making sure that the user knows that he or she is now allowed to reverse engineer or otherwise copy your software.

While technically you can write these policies yourself, we do not recommend that you attempt to do so. There are a lot of laws, cases and legal opinions on how to write these policies correctly in order to provide the best protection.

If you are not a lawyer, and have not spent years studying law and cases, it is likely that the policy you would write yourself will be incomplete,  incorrect and non-compliant.

Also, there are currently a lot of new privacy laws that are being proposed, passed, and amended, meaning that you’d have to spend significant time and resources to stay up to date with the new laws and their implications, and then amend your Privacy Policy every time the laws are added to or changed.

This would require a lot of time, effort, and expense, and would take your time away from your actual business. That’s why we recommend the Privacy Policy experts at Termageddon – they take care of all of this for you, and automatically update your policies so you do not have to worry about it.

If you already have a data privacy attorney already on staff,  you can definitely have him or her write these policies for you, and monitor for new laws and changes. 

On the other hand, to have your outside attorney do this for you will quickly become very expensive, as most attorneys charge hundreds of dollars an hour for their time. Since most lawyers who do not spend most of their time practicing and keeping up with changes in the privacy field will use other resources (including Termageddon) as the source for their “custom” Privacy Policies, using the Termageddon Privacy Policy service direct or through us, will save you hundreds and perhaps even thousands of dollars.

Some of the laws already in effect and being proposed do not limit enforcement and liability to large companies only, so your small business could easily be liable as well.

Also, consumers do not distinguish between small and large businesses when it comes to protecting their privacy, and are unlikely to buy from companies who do not respect their privacy.

Sad to say but there are also unscrupulous individuals and law firms who make their living trolling businesses and websites, and filing lawsuits against violators. Often these lawsuits are settled out of court, but that’s a lot of time and expense for you, and an unnecessary distraction from your business.

Termageddon charges a yearly for its service because it automatically updates your policies whenever the law changes.

Within the next year alone, there are two new privacy laws that are going into effect – California and Nevada. Also there are about a dozen states currently considering new privacy laws, not to mention GDPR from the European Union. 

Most law firms and small companies do not have the time and resources to monitor for changes in the privacy laws of all 50 states and the European Union. Termageddon charges a yearly fee because keeping you up to date involves a lot of research, studying and timely changes to your Privacy Policy.

You could try and copy someone else’s Privacy Policy, rewrite it to fit your business, and then paste it into your website, however this would likely be copyright infringement, and could itself get you sued.

Also, you don’t actually know whether that policy you copied is itself compliant with all current laws, and even if it is it will not auto-update for you, meaning that to protect yourself in the future you will need to monitor and keep track of the changes to the laws that are increasing, then manually add to or update the Privacy Policy on your website.

Having Termageddon generate a custom lawyer-reviewed Privacy Policy for you that you are licensed to use is much easier, less time consuming, and safer. Plus you will have the peace of mind knowing that the latest changes will be applied to your Privacy Policy, without your having to lift a finger!

Using a Privacy Policy template that you found online is definitely tempting, especially since there are so many free ones out there.

However, when you use a template, you can’t be sure who wrote it, when it was written, whether it is correct, or whether it is even compliant with current legal requirements.

Also, a template like that doesn’t automatically update, and no one is going to be notifying you with the changes in the law that are happening.  It will be up to you to keep track of all the changing laws, which I’m going to guess is something you don’t have time for or any desire to do.

Your best option is to use a proven Privacy Policy generator such as Termageddon because their work is great, their policy language is lawyer-written and reviewed to comply with the current laws, they actively monitor for new privacy laws and changes to the policy requirements, and they will automatically update the privacy policies posted on your website for you.

If you have a simple Contact form that asks for the user’s name, email, or phone number, then your website is collecting personal information.

Also, if you have an opt-in form where you ask for the user’s email address in order to send them an email newsletter, your website is collecting personal information.

Having a secure website is awesome!  On the other hand, it is not related to the need to have a Privacy Policy. You need to have a Privacy Policy if you collect any sort of personal information on your website, regardless of how secure that personal information is once it’s given to you.

The laws that are currently in place (California, Nevada, European Union) are intended to protect the citizens and residents of those states who are visiting and using websites, no matter where those websites or the businesses that operate them are located.

This means that under the laws of California, Nevada, the EU, and soon probably others, citizens and residents of those places will be able to take legal action against businesses and websites located anywhere. 

Whether a law can be held to apply to you if you do not live or have a physical presence in the place where it is the law, just because someone in that place visits your website and gives you information about themselves, is somewhat controversial.

Regardless, if you do not want to be a test case or potentially face expensive litigation, the bottom line you need to have a Privacy Policy in place if you collect personal information on your website, regardless of where you or your website are physically located.