What are privacy laws and why does your business need to be concerned?

Privacy laws exist to protect the personal data of individuals online. Privacy laws start applying as soon as a website asks for a name and an email on a contact form. The UK Data Protection Act (2018) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have imposed strict requirements on website operators to have a Privacy Policy that contains very specific disclosures. While these laws were enacted a while ago, we have seen a large increase in the enforcement and number of fines for violations of these laws in the last several months.

To reiterate, having a website with as little as a contact form means that you are collecting personal data and should consider having a Privacy Policy with the necessary disclosures required by these laws. Penalties for non-compliance can be up to €20 million (about £18 million) or 4% of annual global turnover, whichever is greater. On top of that, there is an ever-growing number of proposed privacy laws in the US that, if passed, will enable US citizens to sue businesses of any size and location (including outside the US) simply for collecting their personal data through a website.

What can you do to get protected?
To be proactive about this issue, we’ve partnered up with a Privacy Policy generator called Termageddon. They will automatically update your website policies when the laws change (as well as notify you when changes are coming), and they do it at a fraction of the cost of a privacy solicitor. If Termageddon sounds like a good solution, the license costs £100/year, and we are charging a one-time setup fee of £100 to help you create the policy pages, insert/test the code and ensure your policies stay up to date with changes to the law.

We even put Termageddon’s policies on our own website, check out the links in the footer!