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A compliant Privacy Policy is a policy listed on your website (or online platform) where you provide the exact disclosures you are required to make under the privacy laws you are required to comply with. Privacy Policies are required under multiple privacy laws, with many applying to businesses as soon as they collect as little as a name and email address from its website visitors.
Failure to provide the required disclosures may result in being fined or even sued for privacy law non-compliance.
It is also important to understand that privacy laws do not care where your business is located. Rather, privacy laws are intended to protect the residents or citizens of a particular state, country or continent. So if your website collects personal information from people from various states or countries, you may need to comply with multiple privacy laws and provide the specific disclosures required under each one.
What are the benefits of a compliant Privacy Policy?
A compliant Privacy Policy is a critical part of any modern website. It shows respect for your customers and provides a message of transparency and trust. It also helps you comply with privacy laws. This article is primarily focused on the statutory requirements of Privacy Policies and why it is important to comply with all applicable privacy laws for your business.
What is a Privacy Policy template?
A Privacy Policy template is a document that has pre-written paragraphs disclosing a business’s privacy practices. Templates allow users, typically business owners with a website, to fill in blank areas with details about their business, information they collect and share, privacy practices, and possibly more.
The pro to using a Privacy Policy template is that they are relatively easy to create. There are, however, several problems with Privacy Policy templates that do not get discussed enough. This article is intended to educate business owners on what it takes to provide a comprehensive Privacy Policy and how to keep it up to date with ever-changing privacy laws.
Types of Privacy Policy templates
Privacy Policy templates come in all shapes and sizes. This may seem encouraging at first, as it sounds like there are a wide range of options to choose from. However, the reality is that these templates may not include all of the disclosures required by the privacy laws that apply to your business, making them non-compliant and potentially exposing you to privacy-related fines and lawsuits.
The following sections describe common types of Privacy Policy templates and why they are popular. The remainder of the article will discuss the general problems with Privacy Policy templates, as well as alternatives to templates that can help you not only create but constantly update your Privacy Policy when privacy laws change.
Simple Privacy Policy templates
People often search online for a simple (or basic) Privacy Policy template to add to their own website. This may be due to a business owner wanting to create a Privacy Policy quickly and move on to something else, or it may be because that business owner wants to provide a Privacy Policy that is perceived as simple and thus appears as more trustworthy to clients and website visitors. This section will cover why ‘easy to create’ and ‘perceived as simple and straightforward’ Privacy Policy templates have a high likelihood of being non-compliant and thus can negatively affect a business.
Easy to create Privacy Policy templates have a high chance of being non-compliant. Privacy laws are complex and broad reaching. Your business may be located in a particular part of the world, but if you collect personal information from users in other states or countries, you may be required to comply with their privacy laws as well. Since nearly all privacy laws are different, each requiring unique disclosures, trying to create a Privacy Policy as quickly as you can may result in your business missing a required disclosure and therefore leave your business potentially facing privacy related fines or lawsuits.
Providing a Privacy Policy that you perceive to be simple does not mean you are actually complying with privacy laws. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, unique disclosures are required to be listed in a Privacy Policy if you need to comply with any particular privacy law. Providing a simplified Privacy Policy without these required disclosures puts your business at risk for privacy law non-compliance.
Simple Privacy Policies may leave the business looking less trustworthy. More and more consumers that have privacy rights are aware of their rights. If you fail to provide the disclosures under the privacy laws that give users these rights, this may discourage consumers in trusting the legitimacy and trustworthiness of your business.
Seeking a simple Privacy Policy template may be a fast and straightforward way to have a Privacy Policy, but it is also a high likelihood of being non-compliant. On top of that, using Privacy Policy templates have several inherent flaws worth considering, which is discussed below, along with alternatives to Privacy Policy templates.
Free Privacy Policy templates
Free Privacy Policy templates can be found on many websites. These templates have you fill out a pre-written Privacy Policy document that requires you to insert some basic information about your business as well as add in paragraphs about your privacy practices. Business owners often search for free Privacy Policy templates online in the hopes they can save a little money to add this legally required document to their website.
However, you must be careful when considering a free template. Simply put, “free” does not mean “compliant”. Free templates might be attractive from a cost perspective, but oftentimes do not provide the disclosures your business is legally required to provide within your Privacy Policy. This is due to the uniqueness of individual privacy laws and the fact that each business may have to comply with a different set of privacy laws, and thus have a difference in needs on what specifically they need to disclose within their own Privacy Policy.
Second, many websites claiming to offer free Privacy Policy templates are not free at all. And, by the time you are done with finalizing your template, you find yourself paying hundreds of dollars to get specific disclosures added. This is a frustrating experience to any consumer, who was hoping to nab a free template and move onto something else, and finding themselves pouring a lot of time into setting up their policy, only to find out they have to pay to access it.
Free templates bring in their own set of problems for business owners, but Privacy Policy templates in general have fundamental issues as well which we discuss below. There are several alternatives to free Privacy Policy templates, some of which serve as a cost effective solution for virtually any business.
Sample Privacy Policy templates
Many websites offer sample Privacy Policy templates, where you can utilize a premade Privacy Policy and simply switch out who the business owner is and possibly some details on where your business was formed and what type of legal entity it is. It can be very appealing to business owners to want to utilize a pre-existing Privacy Policy template, enabling them to create their own website Privacy Policy in a matter of seconds. There are, however, significantly more risks that a business faces after creating their own Privacy Policy based on a sample.
Sample Privacy Policy templates may not provide the disclosures you specifically are required to disclose. Outside of the fact that sample templates may not comply with laws they claim to, it’s important to understand that there are many privacy laws in the world and business owners are left with figuring out which ones they do and do not need to comply with. So when you utilize a sample template, you are hoping that the disclosures you’re required to make are the exact disclosures provided within the sample. This is a risky move, as most business owners usually want a compliant Privacy Policy in an effort to avoid privacy related fines or lawsuits.
What if your privacy practices don’t line up with what’s written? When reading through a sample Privacy Policy template, you may find yourself thinking that your own privacy practices do not line up with what’s disclosed within the sample. For example, the policy may state that you are collecting names and emails but if you are collecting names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, IP addresses, etc., then the policy is not accurately reflecting your privacy practices. This can be yet another area of non-compliance risk, where you will then have to decide how to replace the pre-written content with your own privacy practices.
Utilizing sample templates can put your business at an elevated risk of privacy law non-compliance due to assuming you are providing the disclosures to the privacy laws you specifically are required to comply with. You also risk failing to provide your specific privacy practices, making your policy non-compliant as well. There are also 5 fundamental flaws with Privacy Policy templates we discuss below that apply to utilizing a sample template as well.
Before using a sample Privacy Policy template, consider alternatives to templates discussed below that can help you more confidently work towards privacy law compliance.
Privacy Policy templates based on one privacy law
Many startups and even existing businesses seek to find a Privacy Policy template for a specific law. This may be due to believing they only need to comply with the privacy laws within their location, or perhaps they think that they’ll strive to comply with what they believe to be the most stringent privacy law, giving them universal compliance.
Unfortunately, both of these assumptions are wrong and can lead to non-compliance related penalties.
Privacy laws from other states or countries can apply to your business regardless of your location. It is important to understand that governments create and enforce privacy laws to protect its people, and not a single privacy law cares about where your business is located. For example, if you are located in the US but use Google Analytics to track your website visitors, and you collect/track residents of the European Union, then the EU’s privacy law, GDPR, applies to you. This means that you need to provide specific disclosures required by that particular privacy law as well as all other laws that apply to you. Simply put, privacy laws are broad reaching in nature and may require you to make disclosures even if your business isn’t located in that state or country.
There is no universal privacy law to abide by because each privacy law is unique and has its own disclosure requirements. A lot of people believe that by complying with a seemingly stringent privacy law, they will comply with all other privacy laws. This is simply not true. Just about every privacy law in existence has unique disclosures that are required to be disclosed within a Privacy Policy. For example, if you create a Privacy Policy that is compliant with PIPEDA, that policy does not include a disclosure as to how your website responds to Do Not Track Signals as that disclosure is not required by PIPEDA. However, you are required to make this disclosure under CalOPPA if that particular law applies to you. Thus, having a PIPEDA compliant Privacy Policy will not mean that you automatically comply with other privacy laws as well.
The following sections will outline popular Privacy Policy templates as they relate to a specific privacy law, and why it is not a good idea to use these templates without first understanding the potential pros and cons.
GDPR Privacy Policy template
A GDPR Privacy Policy template is intended to help you comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a privacy law protecting the personal data of residents of the European Union and/or the European Economic Area. The template will ask you to fill in paragraphs about your privacy practices along with information about your business, who to contact within your business if an EU resident wants to exercise their rights, where you process data, and more. Businesses often seek a GDPR Privacy Policy template with a preconceived idea that GDPR is the most stringent privacy law in the world. So by having a GDPR Privacy Policy, business owners believe they are compliant with all privacy laws. This is unfortunately not true and can result in a business being penalized for non-compliance for other privacy laws.
A Privacy Policy containing only GDPR compliant disclosures will not comply with other privacy laws. For example, CalOPPA requires businesses to disclose if their website responds to Do Not Track Signals. Nevada Chapter 603A requires businesses to disclose how a Nevada resident can opt out of their information being sold in the future (even if you currently nor ever plan to sell the data you collect). PIPEDA requires businesses to disclose how they protect the personal information they collect. The list goes on and on, but in summary, a Privacy Policy template developed specifically for GDPR will not contain these disclosures and can leave a business non-compliant with other privacy laws they are required to comply with.
The preconceived idea of needing a GDPR compliant Privacy Policy to comply with all privacy laws is patently false, and on top of that, using a template in general to create your Privacy Policy has fundamental flaws in itself, which business owners should review prior to creating their own Privacy Policy.
Be sure to consider the alternatives to Privacy Policy templates that we discuss at the end of this article to find a more comprehensive means to work towards true privacy law compliance.
CPRA Privacy Policy template
The California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) protects the personal information of residents of California. Many businesses are seeking to comply with this law, with the thought that by complying with CPRA, they will comply with all privacy laws. In addition, many businesses seeking to provide a CPRA Privacy Policy on their website are not aware about the business size limits California put in place for who CPRA law applies to. It is important to understand why CPRA may not be the only law requiring your business to make disclosures as well as understand whether or not you are actually required to comply with this privacy law.
A CPRA specific Privacy Policy does not contain all disclosures required by other privacy laws. A great example is that CPRA disclosure requirements within a Privacy Policy are not the same requirements laid out in California’s other privacy law, CalOPPA. CalOPPA is also a far more broad-reaching privacy law, which applies to any business collecting any amount of personally identifiable information from Californians. With CalOPPA, for example, you are required to make Do Not Track disclosures, something CPRA does not require. The fact that just one state has multiple privacy laws, each with separate disclosure requirements, demonstrates how privacy laws are unique. Each privacy law requires its own unique disclosures within a Privacy Policy, and a business owner must first find what privacy laws actually apply to them before understanding what specific disclosures they are required to make.
Just because you do business in California does not mean you are forced to comply with CPRA. California clearly laid out who CPRA applies to within their privacy law. If you do not meet these business requirements, then you are not required to comply with this privacy law.
The problem with a CPRA Privacy Policy template is that it does not provide insight if you need to comply with the actual law in the first place, and if you do, additional disclosures may be required within your Privacy Policy if you need to comply with other privacy laws. A CPRA Privacy Policy template, like all other templates, share all five fundamental flaws we see with templates which we describe below, along with alternatives to templates worth considering.
Privacy Policy templates for websites
Privacy Policy templates for websites are available just about anywhere. There are countless websites offering these types of templates, oftentimes in the hopes that you sign up for some kind of service that they offer beyond the basic ‘free’ template. Many business owners consider Privacy Policy templates for websites to be comprehensive, as they are focused specifically on websites, but this is a misconception.
Privacy Policy templates designed for websites are not necessarily compliant with the specific privacy laws you need to comply with. Privacy laws are broad reaching and can apply to your business even if you aren’t located where the privacy laws were passed. So when leveraging a template for your website’s Privacy Policy, it would be a mistake to start with a premade template, as you don’t know which privacy laws actually apply to you and what specific disclosures you are required to make.
Privacy Policy templates have five issues in general that you should consider before creating a Privacy Policy for your website. And your business should consider the alternatives to templates to ensure you understand both the pros and cons of using any third party to help you add policies to your website.
Privacy Policy templates for mobile apps
Like websites, mobile apps often collect personal information and thus may be required to provide a Privacy Policy as well. And because most mobile apps are intended to have a broad audience spanning multiple countries, privacy laws from all over the world can apply to this type of business. Businesses typically look for a Privacy Policy template for mobile apps because they are under the impression that the template will provide the exact disclosures that mobile apps are required to make, but this is not the case.
Privacy laws do have disclosure requirements specific to mobile apps. That is because privacy laws do not necessarily care how you are collecting personal information, rather they care if you are collecting personal information in general. If you collect the personal information from people with privacy rights, you may be required to make specific disclosures required under each respective privacy law. So if a website offers Privacy Policy templates for mobile apps, be sure to find out specifically what laws they are providing disclosures for. Chances are it will cover disclosures for one or two privacy laws, if any, when in reality, there could be a dozen or more privacy laws that apply to your business, each requiring additional disclosures.
Below, you will find five issues we see with Privacy Policy templates that also apply to mobile apps. We also provide alternatives to Privacy Policy templates, which include cost effective options.
Can I copy someone else’s Privacy Policy?
There are many website owners who go out and copy a Privacy Policy from another website. This is often done when money or time is tight and the website owner is wanting to get a Privacy Policy up as quickly as possible. Usually, when copying someone else’s Privacy Policy, the person will replace the details in the first paragraph such as the business name and type of legal entity. Often, these individuals won’t even read the rest of the Privacy Policy, leaving details about the competitor exposed on their website. As silly as that sounds, you’d be surprised how often this happens. But even if you read through the Privacy Policy before copying it, there will still be some inherent risks associated with this decision, not to mention the significant amount of time it will take to edit the entire policy.
The first issue with copying someone else’s Privacy Policy is that it is copyright infringement. This reason alone should be why it’s risky to copy a Privacy Policy. Copyright infringement can result in a business being sued by the business whose content was stolen.
The second issue with copying someone else’s Privacy Policy is that you are hoping this particular Privacy Policy provides all the disclosures you are required by law to make. So, you are hoping that the original Privacy Policy just so happens to comply with the exact privacy laws you also need to comply with, and that whoever wrote this original Privacy Policy knew what they were doing.
The third issue is not knowing who wrote the Privacy Policy you are copying. Was it a licensed attorney focused on privacy? When was the policy last updated? If the policy is missing a ‘last updated date’, then it is already not compliant for three privacy laws in the US (CalOPPA, DOPPA and Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 603A). The list here could go on and on with how to vet an existing Privacy Policy, but simply put, copying someone else’s policy means you don’t know who you are trusting for your own business’s compliance.
The final and primary issue is that when copying a Privacy Policy, you still haven’t established a strategy to keep your Privacy Policy up to date. This means that when changes are made to a new or amended privacy law, your Privacy Policy will become non-compliant if you were required to make additional disclosures that you failed to provide. There are over a dozen privacy bills in the US that will require Privacy Policy updates if applicable to your business, as well as proposed changes to privacy laws in the UK, Canada and Australia. An outdated Privacy Policy is non-compliant, defeating the purpose of having a comprehensive Privacy Policy in the first place and potentially opening your business up to the risk of fines and lawsuits.
If you are considering copying another company’s Privacy Policy, we’d recommend first understanding all of the associated risks as well as alternative solutions listed below.
Five risks to consider when using a Privacy Policy template
Creating a Privacy Policy for your website helps you comply with privacy laws and avoid privacy related fines and lawsuits. Trying to create one fast and cheap can result in non-compliance, defeating the purpose of a Privacy Policy in the first place.
The next five sections are items you will want to take into consideration before investing your time and possibly money into utilizing a Privacy Policy template to help you comply with applicable privacy laws. We will discuss the legitimacy of Privacy Policy templates, and address topics such as inconsistencies between privacy laws and the inability for templates to update your Privacy Policy when new or existing privacy laws change and require you to make new disclosures.
1. Templates do not help you identify what privacy laws actually apply to you, thus defeating the primary purpose of a Privacy Policy.
If you ask an attorney what to disclose in a Privacy Policy, their first question should be ‘do you know what privacy laws you need to comply with?’. That is because each and every privacy law has specific disclosure requirements, so attorneys can’t draft a Privacy Policy with the right disclosures until they know which laws apply to you.
Templates do not help you identify what privacy laws actually apply to you. This is a key issue with Privacy Policy templates. You simply fill in the blanks and hope you’ve provided the required disclosures to avoid a fine or lawsuit due to privacy law non-compliance. Before you provide a Privacy Policy, you need to know what privacy laws apply to your business, as each privacy law requires you to make specific disclosures within your Privacy Policy. And since governments create privacy laws to protect its citizens, not businesses, you need to know what privacy laws outside of your state or country apply to you as well if you intend to collect data from people in other locations.
Failure to provide disclosures required under each privacy law that applies to you or your business can result in privacy related fines or lawsuits. By utilizing a Privacy Policy template that doesn’t take into account the actual laws that apply to you almost undoubtedly will leave you non-compliant thus defeating the purpose of having a comprehensive Privacy Policy in the first place.
2. Templates do not comply with all privacy laws.
Privacy Policy templates fall into one of two categories. They either claim to provide compliance for one or multiple privacy laws or they do not discuss compliance for any particular privacy laws at all. This section will help provide insights into what a user should take into account when considering either of these categories as a potential solution for their own business’s Privacy Policy.
When it is unclear which privacy laws are being covered, chances are the template is not intended to comply with any privacy law at all. There are countless Privacy Policy templates out there claiming to be comprehensive without disclosing what specific privacy laws they are intended to help provide compliance for. This should be a red flag to any potential user, as privacy laws are what require businesses to provide a Privacy Policy in the first place.
There are also many Privacy Policy templates available online, where the provider will disclose that the template is not intended to comply with a particular privacy law, rather to provide a starting point to learn about the importance of complying with privacy laws.
WordPress, for example, does a good job with this by providing a Privacy Policy page by default with every new installation. This was intended to raise awareness of the importance of privacy compliance, but was never intended to provide the disclosures required by any particular privacy law. And when reviewing this page’s default statements, it is clear that the WordPress Privacy Policy template does not provide the specific disclosures required by privacy laws.
Templates claiming to provide required disclosures usually fail to provide all required disclosures. Each privacy law requires website owners to provide specific disclosures within their Privacy Policy. When reviewing a Privacy Policy template claiming to provide all disclosures for a particular privacy law, you can use this privacy law disclosure requirements article to see if the template does indeed provide all the disclosures you need to comply. Time and time again, when comparing templates to this article, we find that templates claiming to provide disclosures for a particular privacy law end up not providing all the required disclosures.
Whether intended to comply or not, Privacy Policy templates can leave business owners liable for privacy law non-compliance because of missing or inaccurate disclosures, while simultaneously instilling confidence in the business owner that they are compliant and can move onto something else. This is why we propose reviewing alternatives to Privacy Policy templates to ensure website owners can at least be aware of the fact that there are more comprehensive solutions available.
3. Templates do not update your Privacy Policy when the laws change and require new disclosures.
A lot of people believe that after they create their Privacy Policy by using a template, they can move on and focus on something else. They believe they won’t ever have to update it again. This is simply not true.
Privacy laws and bills constantly change, requiring new or amended disclosures. Currently, the United States has over a dozen by itself, each requiring updates to respective Privacy Policies if the laws pass. Outside of the United States, countries like Canada, the UK, and Australia all have either proposed changes to their privacy laws or are currently reviewing their privacy laws to consider making changes to it. Failure to provide newly required disclosures to a Privacy Policy means the Privacy Policy is non-compliant, putting the business at risk for privacy related fines and lawsuits.
States and countries can have multiple privacy laws, each with separate disclosure requirements. California has two privacy laws, and several states in the US have proposed multiple privacy laws that are being considered. When creating a Privacy Policy to comply with a particular privacy law, a business owner must take into account that the privacy law may change, or new ones can be introduced, requiring new disclosures to be made within a Privacy Policy.
Updates to your Privacy Policy may already need to be planned out for your business. There are currently several more laws that will go into effect in the upcoming year — each requiring Privacy Policy changes if they apply to you. These are:
- Iowa SF262 (effective January 1, 2025);
- Indiana SB5 (effective July 1, 2026);
- Tennessee Information Protection Act (TIPA – effective July 1, 2025);
- Montana Consumer Data Privacy Act (MCDPA – effective October 1, 2024);
- Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA – effective July 1, 2024);
- Oregon Consumer Privacy Act (effective July 1, 2024);
- NJ SB332 (effective January 16, 2025);
- Delaware Personal Data Privacy Act (DPDPA – effective January 1, 2025);
- New Hampshire SB 255 (effective January 1, 2025);
- Kentucky HB15 (effective 1, 2026);
- Nebraska LB1074 (effective January 1, 2025).
Business owners collecting personal information (like names, emails and IP addresses) on their website must have a strategy in place to keep their Privacy Policies up to date with new disclosure requirements. Be sure to review our alternatives to Privacy Policy templates to establish a strategy to keep your Privacy Policy up to date with new disclosures.
4. Penalties for privacy non-compliance are large
Penalties for privacy law non-compliance are significant, whether you are a well established business or a brand new startup. And because a website may collect personal information from people all over the world, penalties could come from different jurisdictions.
Fines start at $2,500 per website visitor from California. For example, one of California’s privacy laws, CalOPPA, starts applying to businesses as soon as they collect the personal information of California visitors. This means that if you are utilizing a website tracking tool such as Google Analytics, CalOPPA will apply to your business as soon as one Californian visits your website. This is because using a tool like Google Analytics means that your website collects IP addresses, an example of personally identifiable information. Under CalOPPA, the penalty for not providing proper disclosures within a Privacy Policy can result in a “$2,500 per Californian website visitor” type of fine. That means if 100 Californians visit your website during the time period where you were non-compliant, the fine would be $250,000. This is a significant amount simply for not providing a proper Privacy Policy.
Fines can exceed €20,000,000 euros for GDPR non-compliance. In the European Union, fines for collecting the personal information of residents of the EU without proper consent (including a proper Privacy Policy) can go beyond €20,000,000 euros. You can review the GDPR Enforcement Tracker to see all fines being issued for GDPR non-compliance. Here, you will see how even one person companies are receiving 5-figure fines for not complying.
Proposed bills could let consumers sue businesses directly. There is currently a proposed amendment to Canada’s privacy law, PIPEDA, which will enable Canadians to sue businesses for non compliance with their privacy law, regardless of the business’s size or location. In the US, there are several privacy bills proposing ‘private right of action’, meaning, if passed, residents of those states would be able to sue a business, regardless of the business’s size or location, for not providing Privacy Policy disclosures specific to their privacy law.
You must ask yourself, do you want to quickly and cheaply create your Privacy Policy using a template or are you trying to actually comply with laws to avoid privacy-related fines and lawsuits? Consider the alternatives to Privacy Policy templates that we discuss below.
5. Who wrote the Privacy Policy template?
Last but not least, who wrote the template that you are utilizing to generate your Privacy Policy to comply with privacy laws? Are they a licensed attorney? Do they have a background in privacy? Does the author disclose what privacy laws they are covering with the template? What is their plan to deal with the dozens of proposed new privacy bills and countless proposed changes to existing privacy laws?
Chances are that a privacy attorney did not draft the template, as most privacy attorneys know that the first rule to comply with privacy laws is to identify what privacy laws apply to your business in the first place. In addition, because most privacy laws have ‘if this then that’ types of clauses, most privacy attorneys know that ‘filling in the blanks’ is not a secure way to ensure you have the proper disclosures you’re actually required to make.
Not caring about who wrote the Privacy Policy template could be a misstep for your business, because a primary goal of a Privacy Policy should be to avoid privacy related fines and lawsuits, meaning you are providing the exact disclosures that are required under each privacy law that applies to you.
Alternatives to Privacy Policy templates
As mentioned above, Privacy Policy templates do not help you identify what laws actually apply to you, do not help you comply with all laws, do not update when new disclosures are required, and add unnecessary risk for non-compliance penalties.
The sections below provide alternatives to Privacy Policy templates. Each of these alternatives has its own pros and cons, but are helping solve the problems that templates fundamentally fail to address.
Privacy Policy template vs. privacy attorney
Shockingly (sarcasm), the best way to provide a compliant Privacy Policy on your website is to work with a licensed attorney that focuses their work in privacy. A great way to find a stellar privacy attorney is to review the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ website and make some phone calls.
When speaking with a privacy attorney, some key questions to get answered are:
- How do you draft a Privacy Policy? You’ll want to make sure they discuss the fact that they first need to find out what privacy laws apply to your business. It’s important to know that a privacy attorney is taking all applicable privacy laws into consideration, not just the ones that happen to be where your business is located.
- How do you keep Privacy Policies up to date? This question will help you understand how a privacy attorney monitors privacy laws and notifies you when changes need to be made to your Privacy Policy.
- What is the cost for the initial Privacy Policy creation as well as the cost for the monitoring of privacy laws? Keep the upfront and ongoing expenses in mind when budgeting for ongoing compliance.
Nothing beats working with a privacy attorney to keep your website Privacy Policy up to date with required disclosures, but a major con is that privacy attorneys are usually expensive. And because Privacy Policies need to be updated when new or existing privacy laws are changed, attorneys often charge an ongoing fee to monitor privacy laws on your behalf. Hiring a privacy attorney to not only draft but update your Privacy Policy can be too expensive for many businesses. This is why many business owners select a comprehensive Privacy Policy generator as a cost effective alternative.
Privacy Policy template vs Privacy Policy generator
Privacy Policy generators exist as a cost effective alternative to a privacy attorney. Unlike templates, a good Privacy Policy generator will first and foremost help you identify what privacy laws actually apply to your business. A generator will then ask you a series of questions about how you operate your business and ultimately produce a customized Privacy Policy for you that fits your business and privacy practices.
After you set up your Privacy Policy with a generator, you will then receive alerts when new laws go into effect and when new disclosures become required by new or amended privacy laws. Privacy Policy generators like Termageddon can also push updates to your Privacy Policy webpage automatically when these new disclosures become required.
If you are considering using a Privacy Policy generator, be sure to research who within the company is monitoring privacy laws. Most Privacy Policy generators charge similar fees, so you want to focus on who is the most active in ensuring your Privacy Policy stays up to date over time.
The con to using a Privacy Policy generator is that it is a technology company not a legal service provider. So you will see Disclaimers stating that the generators are not providing legal advice. This helps Privacy Policy generators make their auto-updating Privacy Policies accessible to small businesses.
When choosing a Privacy Policy generator, make sure it:
- Helps you identify what privacy laws apply to your business;
- Provides notifications and automatic updates when new privacy laws pass or when existing privacy laws are amended;
- Provides detailed explanations as to what is specifically required under each privacy law;
- Was created and managed by someone experienced with privacy law.
Just like all methods for creating a Privacy Policy, there are pros and cons to using a Privacy Policy generator. Take the time to understand your options, and only then invest into what’s best for you and your business.
Conclusion: do you want a fast or compliant Privacy Policy?
If you want to set up a template fast and cheap, chances are you won’t be compliant with all privacy laws and you certainly won’t be compliant when existing privacy laws change or new privacy laws are enacted and require new disclosures. Creating a fast but non-compliant Privacy Policy completely defeats one of the primary purposes of having a Privacy Policy in the first place, as it exposes you to privacy related fines and lawsuits.
If you want a compliant Privacy Policy, contact a privacy attorney to draft and keep your Privacy Policy up to date. Make sure they provide you a quote to monitor privacy laws and keep your Privacy Policy up to date, as new disclosure requirements occur often.
If you want a cost effective alternative to a privacy attorney and would like a tool to help you identify what privacy laws apply to you as well as automatically keep your Privacy Policy up to date, consider researching a trusted Privacy Policy generator for your business. Privacy Policy generators are cost effective and can provide automatic updates to your policies when privacy laws change. If you decide to use a generator instead of a privacy attorney, you will be leveraging a tool, not a legal service provider, for your Privacy Policy, but will still be able to reap the benefits of finding what laws actually apply to you while keeping your Privacy Policy up to date with new disclosures.
