Website privacy and terms

greg posted this at 16:56 — 11th August 2009.

Joined: Nov 2005

Are there any real legal implications to having or not having a privacy statement and terms on a website?

Such as what if you don't have one, and don't tell anyone you collect their IP and browser details in cookies (etc).
Or for a contact form where you use session cookies to store their name and email, perhaps address?

Greg K posted this at 18:08 — 11th August 2009.

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

IMO, and I'm no lawyer, I pay them to CMA (Cover My ...) the IP and Browser information, well just about every web server collects this already, so should not be a problem how you use it.

The information on a form, depending on what you use it for would be the questionable area. Using it to just e-mail a contact form, no problem. They are submitting it to you to contact you.

I always like this one:

While we most likely will not give out your information to anyone, by coming to this site, you agree that we can do whatever we want, for free or for profit, with anything we find out about you. Use common sense in what you provide us, we'll use common sense in what we use it for.

Now here is the other fun legality issue. You go to a site, you browse around for an hour, however they have a statement on the site that says by visiting the site, you agree to their terms of use. However you never viewed them.. are you still bound by them???

Kinda like the e-mails "the infomation in this e-mail is for the intended recipient, if you are not this person you must destroy this message and cannot use it". IMO, you freely send me information I didn't request, I can do whatever the heck I want with it.

-Greg