The Best Privacy Policy Generators
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough
Hey founders et al. In today’s edition, we explore which DIY privacy policy generators you can use to mitigate privacy risk early on. We also highlight great attorneys and tools in the data privacy space.
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You get out what you put in
The phrase “garbage in garbage out” applies equally to privacy policy generators as it does to coding. While creating a privacy policy is certainly not the most intellectually challenging exercise you will face in your founder journey, the task requires a fair amount of attention to detail to properly mitigate risk and inform your customers of your data privacy practices. With even the most basic generators, I would dedicate a large part of your day to understanding the legal requirements and your disclosure obligations before taking your time to answer the questions asked by whichever privacy policy generator you choose.
The process of drafting a privacy policy generally involves documenting your data collection and use practices as granularly as possible, and then articulating them to your users in a format that is dictated by your jurisdiction’s regulations. Certain regulations, such as the CCPA (California’s current rule) or the GDPR (the EU’s privacy regulation) provide for specific disclosure requirements and consumer rights to be accounted for in your policies, and they require your practices to fall in line as well. Privacy policy generators make it easier to comply with the disclosure requirements, but your data collection and use practices need to follow suit.
As with every legal related task, you have the option of outsourcing this work to a lawyer. For the budget conscious or hacker-type founders, I figured I’d help out by testing a few of the most popular privacy policy generators (Termly.io, Iubenda, and Termsfeed). IMO the only two worth using are Termly (an easier plug-n-play option) or Iubenda (more comprehensive for more complex businesses). I documented some of the pros and cons, and ranked them accordingly. I’m working on a better way to document this, but for now - they are on my notion page. Check it out here.
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Lawyer Spotlight
We love highlighting founder-friendly lawyers doing great work in startup spaces. Check out our database of founder-friendly firms and lawyers for previously highlighted lawyers.
Chandana Rao is a lawyer with Outside GC. She is a seasoned corporate attorney with nearly 20 years of legal and business experience representing companies at all stages of development and across a broad and diverse range of industries, including retail/e-commerce; education tech; wellness tech; interactive entertainment including video games; digital media and life sciences. Chandana’s clients value her practical understanding of business operations and risk-based, strategic approach to problem solving. Thanks for being founder-friendly, Chandana!
“Outside GC got me the best lawyers for what I needed, and they did it in an incredibly efficient and affordable fashion. I continue to use them for my startup's legal needs.
Reviewing Founder Profile: Online marketplace, 1-9 employees, pre-seed
Work completed for reviewing founder: Custom Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for recruiting and staffing platform.
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Brian