Hi! I'm Brenda. I am building a calm & modern business and a homeschooling mom of 4 with a passion for reading and hospitality. I'm also wife to an executive chef and reliant on Jesus for grace along the way. Follow our journey with our sometimes daily email where I share life and business insights plus quick SquareSpace web design and Dubsado automation tutorials.
‼️ New Privacy Policy Laws + End of Year Legal Updates
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Hi Reader The year is shortly coming to a close! Hooray! I'm wishing you all the best holiday season. But before you shut down completely for the holidays, there are several new regulations to make note of as well as yearly updates. Take a bit of time now before your in vacation mode to address these changes or create an action plan so you know exactly what to do when you come back online. **Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Website New Year Reminders: First, make your self a reminder to update your Copy-write date on your website to © 2025 Your company name or to include 2025 as your new end date. © 2021-2025 Your company name. This is a quick change that you can do yourself by just editing the text of the footer and saving it. If you're wanting to have this feature auto-update and are comfortable adding a little custom code to your Squarespace website here's the code snippet I used on the Sisu Site Shop website footer: © 2021-document.write(new Date().getFullYear()) Your Business Name All Rights Reserved If you need a walk trough of how to do this watch this tutorial. Here's my footer as an example: Required Legal Disclosures: Second, review and update, your legal disclosures on your website. There are several things that need to be addressed to comply legally for your website. All websites that collect visitor data of any kind for any reason must have a Privacy Policy and a Cookie Policy. It is also recommended to have a Website Terms & Conditions and Terms & Conditions for online sales if you are selling products online. **NEW** GPSR: On December 13, the The GPSR (General Product Safety Regulations) went into effect in the EU. If your digital or physical products are available for purchase or download to EU customers, this is something you'll need to look into and potentially comply with. I have heard that this may also include free downloads. There is a bit of uncertainty surrounding this and how it will be interpreted. Current solutions: 1. Have a software that can geo-locationally block downloads and sales. 2. Get a GPSR Authorized Representative. (Here is a provider I've seen recommended: Lucy Legal). Privacy Policy: Required by law for your website This tells your site visitor what information you are collecting and what you are doing with that information. If you are using Squarespace as for your website, you are collecting site traffic data. This is automatically done by Squarespace and can be accessed in the analytics tab. **NEW**The US has five new privacy laws going into effect in Jan 2025 regarding surpassing threshold levels for data processing and sales: Delaware (January 1, 2025) In case you missed them here are the other laws that went into effect earlier this year: Montana (October 1, 2024) Please review to see if your privacy policy needs updating as a result of all these new laws keeping in mind many have requirements if your website is visited by people living in the states listed above, not simply that your business in located in these states. Cookie Policy: Required by law for your website Notifies your website visitor of the cookies placed by the website and gains consent to do so and is easy to update in Squarespace. Squarespace made some updates to the main options as well as styling preferences as recently as Nov 2024. Learn more about them here. Terms & Conditions: Recommended for your website This is basically a statement/contract between you and the visitor on your website. This is where you state your Copywrite information and it becomes very important when/if you begin making sales through your website. Terms & Conditions of Online Sales: Required by law for your website if you sell digital or physical products on your website or other online platform. This is a statement/contract between you and the visitor on your website outlining what you are selling, shipping policies, and payment policies including how you will handle requests for refunds, etc. I recommend hiring a lawyer to draft these specific to your business or purchase a template for your lawyer to customize for you. My Current Solutions: In 2023, I decided to update my free legal templates with auto updating ones from Termageddon. This year I've received four "action required" emails from Termageddon. They included a link to more detailed information about a new law and most often a five minute or less solution-a new yes/no question to answer to add a new clause if necessary to my privacy policy. I am so happy I made the switch. I have a lot more peace of mind and an easy comprehensive solution to share with you. For my website, I have my Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Cookie Policy and Disclaimer from Termageddon. If you'd like to go this route here's an affiliate link*: Termageddon Affiliate link for Sisu Site Shop. My promo code is SISU. You'll get 10% off your 1st year payment. *At no additional cost to you, I will receive a small commission should you choose to use my link(s). When I launch courses and template shop, I will use the template I purchased from Creative Law Shop. For additional in-depth information regarding website legal requirements please read: How to Start an Online Shop by Creative Law Shop and any other of their informative articles. Their customizable templates include lifetime updates and come highly recommended by myself, my mentors, and peers. Accessibility: The need for accessibility features will only continue to become more important. Squarespace has made this a priority in their platform. Review Squarespace Accessibility Information. For more information review this Accessibility Checklist. For our website, I decided to add an additional service called Accessibe, also an affiliate link*. Unfortunately, there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the best way to create a seamless experience for all users. When building my own and clients websites I start my design process with accessibility in mind and one of the reasons I chose Squarespace as my platform of choice. If you'd like to read more about Accessibility, my mentor Rache from Squarestylist recently complied her comprehensive analysis of the different web platforms to determine her recommendations for which website builder ranks best in accessibility? **Update** Reporting Requirement Jan 1 2024: Last January, the Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) Report was a new report required for businesses to file with U.S. Dept. of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). For the moment there is an nationwide preliminary injunction in effect. Here's more information: https://www.fincen.gov/boi Please review with your lawyer to determine your course of action. I know this is a lot to process, which is why I wanted to get this out to you now, so you have time to process and create a plan to address all of these updates. Wishing you the best in your research! Cheers, When you are ready here’s three ways we can help:
Brenda Thorpe *This email may contain affiliate links by which I may receive a small amount of compensation at no extra cost to you. Hopefully you will find them to be a great benefit. We only recommend products and programs we use and love!* |
Sisu Site Shop
Hi! I'm Brenda. I am building a calm & modern business and a homeschooling mom of 4 with a passion for reading and hospitality. I'm also wife to an executive chef and reliant on Jesus for grace along the way. Follow our journey with our sometimes daily email where I share life and business insights plus quick SquareSpace web design and Dubsado automation tutorials.
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