I read an article in Sunday’s paper which said that the one Billionth web site mark was reached on the Internet last Friday. While I have written literally hundreds of Privacy Policies and Terms of Service over the past twelve years, there are thousands of web sites that have ignored this important aspect of their social media.

And while it is true that almost nobody reads the Privacy Policy before they enter your site; that is not when the Privacy Policy is needed by you. It is needed when someone takes offense to something on your site and wants to attack you in court or on social media!

If you have a well written Privacy Policy by a lawyer with Internet experience, that person coming after you is going to find they are not in a good position to attack you. In fact, if they hire their own lawyer to sue you, that lawyer will read your Privacy Policy (and TOS) and ask for at least $20,000 down. An ethical lawyer might even advise the new client not to bother as they will not win.

So understand, by using a lawyer with Internet experience to write your site’s policies (and to explain each section to you) you can save yourself thousands of dollars in expense down the road. This professional policy becomes a very cheap insurance policy!

How cheap? I, myself, have a new client introductory special for standard legal documents for the site (including a Privacy Policy, a Terms of Service, a DMCA notice, a Copyright notice and a common law Trademark) for which I only charge $1,499.00. Now for the average six hours I spend on this work, including the hours I spend on the phone discussing the issues with you, this is very cheap insurance indeed. It is also very cheap legal services – about one-half of what my competition charges, and a mere pittance of what a lawyer who has never done this type of work for their clients would normally charge.

If you do not have a Privacy Policy you need to correct this omission now!

Finally, do NOT make the mistake of thinking you can just scrape these policies off of another site. What that site needs is not necessarily what you need. Further, if you do not understand how the Policy interacts with your site it could end up costing you many thousands of dollars instead of saving you time and money when a controversy does arise.

Please feel free to contact me for a No Charge, No Obligation discussion about this, or any other Internet law issue. Thank You.

Back to school — an annual ritual that includes buying new notebooks, packing lunches, coordinating transportation, and filling out forms: registration forms, health forms, permission slips, and emergency contact forms, to name a few.

Many school forms require personal and, sometimes, sensitive information. Find out how your child’s information is collected, used, stored, and thrown away. Your child’s personal information is protected by law. Asking schools and other organizations to safeguard your child’s information can help minimize your child’s risk of identity theft.

A child’s Social Security number can be used by identity thieves to apply for government benefits, open bank and credit card accounts, apply for a loan or utility service, or rent a place to live. Check for a credit report to see if your child’s information is being misused. Take immediate action if it is.

Check out the FTC consumer alert located at:
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0040-child-identity-theft