With more and more privacy laws on the horizon, we advise all of our clients 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. These laws apply to the location of the visitor to your website, not where you or your website hosting is located.
Several privacy laws require certain websites to have a Privacy Policy
You may already be a !*WINNER LOSER
* You don’t want to lose even one of these lawsuits when you can protect yourself with some simple precautions.
A privacy compliance website Termageddon has a Privacy Policy Law Tracker that they keep updated to follow new state laws in the pipeline. You can see it online: State Privacy Bill Tracker.
What is a Privacy Policy?
A Privacy Policy is a statement provided on a website that explains how you collect, use, and disclose personally identifiable information (PII).
As an example see the Privacy Policy for this website.
What is my risk?
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. Some states allow an individual visitor to initiate a lawsuit if you don’t comply with the laws in their state.
What is considered PII?
Any website that has as little as a contact form is collecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and should have a Privacy Policy. Even tracking visitor activity for website analytics that includes the visitor’s IP address is considered PII.
What state laws apply to me?
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 specifically note that businesses of any size and any location will have to comply or may face fines or lawsuits.
see current pending law status at: Privacy Bill Tracker
What are your alternatives to implement a Privacy Policy statement on your website? I’ll cover that in Part 2 of this series.
More posts are on the way. I’ll be adding additional posts in this series elaborating on Privacy Policies and starting to cover Cookie Policies, and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) legal requirements for websites and what your options are for making your website compliant.
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