eBusiness Institute

Do You Need A Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions On Your Website?

Do You Need A Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions On Your Website?

Today I talk with Jeanette Jifkins, who explains how a privacy policy and terms and conditions protects both you and your visitors who come to your site. These simple tips are easy to setup straight away on your website.

CLICK ON THE VIDEO BELOW to hear from Jeanette Jifkins

Matt Raad:               I’m here today with Jeanette Jifkins from Onyx Legal. And a really common question that I want to ask (and I’m sure all our students want to ask as well) is – do you need terms and privacy policy and, formal terms and conditions on your website? Do we need to be concerned about those?

Do I need terms and conditions to protect my website?

Jeanette:          So, from a compliance perspective, legal compliance maybe not, because it depends on your industry. If you’re in a regulated industry, then you will need to have certain terms and conditions.

But if you’re not in a regulated industry then the benefit of terms and conditions is to protect your own business. The whole beauty of being online is you get to control your space. This is why so many people are having issues with Facebook right now, because they control their space.

Matt:               Yes they do.

You have control of your own website space

Jeanette:          But your website is your space. You get to control it. If you create terms and conditions and you build them into your website, then that gives you that level of protection and control.

You still have to comply with the legal obligations that impact you and your business. But in terms of the way you interact with the people who interact with you online, you have a level of control. If you don’t have terms and conditions, you have no control.

Matt:               Okay, so it’s more just to protect yourself.

Jeanette:          It is more to protect yourself.

Matt:               It’s not a legal requirement as such?

Jeanette:          Unless you’re in a regulated industry.

Every website you build should have terms & conditions and privacy policy

Matt:               So, we would highly recommend that people do have terms and conditions and privacy policies on their websites.

Jeanette:          Well the other thing about privacy is a lot of people don’t understand whether their business is covered or not, and it’s worth asking the question.

Jeanette Jifkins with Matt and Liz Raad discuss legals for websites

Jeanette covers these kind of topics in more detail at our live digital marketing conferences. You can hear her talk about the latest website legal developments and what you need to include in your website terms and conditions and privacy policy so that both you and your website visitors are protected.