The importance of website policy pages like Privacy, Terms & Disclaimers
This page helps explain what website policies are and how they help you comply with laws and also protect you by limiting your liability. Remember that we are website developers and not attorneys, so this is not legal advice and you should discuss any further questions with your business lawyer. In the same way that we are not qualified to write other legal documentation for your business, like bills of sale or contracts, we cannot write legal documents for your website. But we can point you in the right direction.
What is a Privacy Policy?
A Privacy Policy helps you, the website owner to comply with privacy laws by providing specific disclosure requirements such as how their website collects, uses, and discloses personal information.
A comprehensive Privacy Policy is required to comply with privacy laws
Today’s modern websites are built to provide a great user experience and motivate prospective customers to reach out and inquire about what you have to offer. This is done through the use of tools such as contact forms, website analytics, and more.
Contact forms ask users to submit their ‘name’ and ‘email’, which are examples of personal information. When a website uses analytics, it collects each visitor’s IP address and shares that personal information with third party data analytics providers. These are just a few examples of the many ways websites collect and share personal information.
The collection of personal information is regulated under multiple privacy laws. For example, Canada’s privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) requires businesses to disclose a comprehensive Privacy Policy if their website is collecting the personal information of Canadians. Penalties for non-compliance can be substantial and can apply to businesses of any size.
In addition, Canada has recently proposed a new privacy bill, The Consumer Privacy Protection Act. If passed, this law will require companies to update their Privacy Policy with new disclosures. This law will also enable Canadians to sue any business for collecting their personal information without displaying a Privacy Policy that includes the newly required disclosures. This is a good example of the ever-changing nature of privacy laws and we recommend that you not only have a comprehensive Privacy Policy in place but that you also develop a strategy to keep your policies up to date when these laws are amended or when new laws are implemented.
Google requires your website to have a Privacy Policy
A website utilizing Google Analytics is required by Google to have a Privacy Policy. You can find this requirement within section 7 of Google’s Terms of Service: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/terms/us/
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 here are two that are the most popular and are easy ways to protect your website and your business.
Example 1: When a website offers links to third party websites, a Terms of Service can help explain to users that the business is not responsible if a user clicks those links. So, if a third party link brings a user to a hacked website, the Terms of Service disclosure can help prevent you from being sued.
Example 2: A Terms of Service agreement can also provide a disclosure where people can contact you if they believe that you have infringed on their intellectual property. For example, if you accidentally use an image that you do not have the permission to use, this disclosure can help reduce the likelihood of a copyright infringement lawsuit.
How to get a Privacy Policy, Terms of Service and other legal pages for your website.
If you have the budget, we always 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. If you do not have the budget to hire a privacy lawyer for your website policies, we recommend using Termageddon.com or WebsitePolicies.com, which is the service we have used for our various legal pages.
- Termageddon.com is a comprehensive website policies generator and will automatically update your website policies when privacy laws change or new laws go into effect, helping you stay compliant and avoid privacy related fines and lawsuits, and they do it at a fraction of the cost of a lawyer. 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 largest international privacy organization in the world (iapp.org). Fees to use Termageddon will likely run (at the time of writing this) around $99 USD per year, however, the documentation will update itself so you never have to update it unless you add/remove/change how you collect information.
- WebsitePolicies.com is a Canadian provider, and (at the time of writing,) runs around of $20 per policy. While the documentation will not auto update, you will get an email from WebsitePolicies.com as re-writes to your policies have been made, so you can update your respective pages.
If either of these options are something you’d like to explore, we can work with you to get you set up with the right provider, and have some training materials in the works. In either provider, you’ll answer some questions, then presto, the documentation will be created, which needs to be added to your site, which we can do for you. If you are building a website with us, we’ll add the code at no additional charge. If your site is existing, we there is a one-time setup fee of $150 CAD to create the policy pages, insert/test the code.
HPX Media Website Policies Waiver
When you sign the website development to engage HPX Media in the development of your website, you are also confirming that you have received a link to, and have read our above disclaimer for the legal requirements of Privacy Policies and the additional protections of Terms of Service agreements.
You also acknowledge that we informed you that applicable (province, national, or international) law may require your website to have a Privacy Policy with specific disclosures. We can’t stress enough: we are not lawyers, we do not provide Privacy Policies as a service, and we are not responsible for your business complying with any applicable privacy laws.
As discussed above, we have a relationship with a third-party documentation generators WebsitePolicies.com and Termageddon.com. That being said, you are under no obligation to utilize Termageddon.com or WebsitePolicies.com—you are welcome to use a lawyer or any other provider you feel is appropriate for your organization. Please note, should you choose to use Termageddon.com, WebsitePolicies.com or any other provider’s services, your relationship will be directly with them, governed solely by their Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
You have four options:
- You will provide HPX Media with website policies and understand it’s your sole responsibility to update the policies when the laws change and will notify HPX Media when you have an updated policy page that needs to be put on your website (or you can do it yourself.) If this is not a new website build, you also agree to pay a $150 CDN implementation fee to incorporate the policies onto your website.
- We can connect you with Termageddon.com or WebsitePolicies.com and walk through the questionnaires yourself. You can put these policies on your website yourself, or , if you’d prefer us to do it for you we can implement the policy pages onto your website, if the site is not a new build, the fee to do this would be $150 CDN.
- We can set up a Zoom call with you walk through setting these up with either provider. This would cost roughly $120, in addition to adding them to your website. You can put these policies on your website yourself, or , if you’d prefer us to do it for you we can implement the policy pages onto your website, if the site is not a new build, the fee to do this would be $150 CDN.
- You can choose not to have any policies on my website or will research, install, and update your policies, on your own. You understand that by not having a comprehensive Privacy Policy on your website, that you may be non-compliant with multiple privacy laws.
This is a lot to take in, so we’re happy to chat further and help you choose which option is right for you. Contact us with any questions, and know that there’s no silly questions.