The new California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which went into effect January 1, 2020 began being enforced on July 1, 2020. You don’t have to operate your business in California for these laws to apply to your business.
A Privacy Policy is a statement provided on a website that explains how you collect, use, and disclose personally identifiable information (PII).
Any website that has as little as a contact form is collecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and should have a Privacy Policy.
Several privacy laws are now in place to protect the Personally Identifiable Information of citizens of certain states with fines that can reach $2,500-$7,500 per website visitor.
In addition, more and more states are proposing their own privacy laws, each with their own unique requirements and penalties for not complying. Some of these bills would enable citizens to sue businesses for simply having a contact form without an updated Privacy Policy. Several states make note that businesses of any size and any location will have to comply or may face fines or lawsuits.
With more and more privacy laws on the horizon, we advise all of our client partners to not only have a Privacy Policy in place but also have a strategy to keep it up-to-date with newly required disclosures. An up-to-date Privacy Policy can help you avoid significant privacy-related fines and lawsuits.
Take Action
If you don’t want to hire a privacy attorney to create and keep your policies up-to-date, we recommend using an auto-updating service called Termageddon.
Termageddon is a comprehensive website policies generator and will update your website policies when privacy laws change, helping you stay compliant and avoid fines and lawsuits. We began using their service earlier this year and have been recommending it to our new website clients since then.
Even if you simply have a contact form or collect email subscriber’s information, we recommend you have a privacy policy included on your website.
A Termageddon license is $99/year and includes a set of policies (Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Disclaimer, and more) to help ensure your website and business is protected. You will have full access to your policies with a Termageddon account, and you will be notified when new laws go into effect and when your policies are being updated or when new disclosures require additional questions that need to be answered.
Please review this information with your lawyer and reach out to us with any questions you may have in regards to setting up policies as required for your business.