EST 1980
Watermark Water Cooler | Colorado Privacy Act
Cameron: Hello and welcome to the Watermark Water Cooler. We're here with Darby Digital consultant salesperson here at Watermark. Darby, we're gonna talk about privacy policy and some new things that are happening with privacy policies. Not only here in Colorado, but Across the country. What's going on?
Darby: Well, I mean, it's a big deal right now, right? Yesterday or the day before, Facebook just got Facebook Meta, just got hit with a 1.3 billion fine for not complying with GDPR. As far as the state of Colorado, the has not gone into effect yet, but it will in July, on July 1st, 2023.
Darby: So in a few months with that, if you are not compliant and you You know, violate the compliance, right? You will be hit with a $20,000 fine. Per violation. So it's very, very important that we update all businesses that have websites targeting Colorado citizens to get compliant on their website and have a privacy policy, terms and conditions, and other features of the Privacy Act to make sure they are following regulations or they will get punished. It's more than just Colorado, right?
Cameron: California has theirs, Utah has theirs, and Virginia does. There are other states, right, that have their own privacy policy. Colorado will take effect on July 1. So obviously people who have businesses here in Colorado with a website. And that's what I wanted to talk about next.
Cameron: What does this cover? Like why should I have a privacy policy? What things on my site would make me collect data? Right.
Darby: Okay. So I guess it, it really depends on which state laws we're, we're, I guess, focusing on. So that, that's, that's the big issue, right? It depends on the state. Yeah. You need to cover, you, you should cover probably all of the state's rules.
Darby: So how is California being, the most strict? So how do you, how do you comply with all of them and all these questions and like, what are the things that they care about? As far as the main things that people should consider, first, you need a privacy policy that Is up to date with all the data that's collected on your website or through its processors which are essentially things like Google Analytics or Facebook Tag Manager, anything that collects data, user data on your website.
Darby: So you need to have the ability first to notify your users that, hey, this is what's happening. Or the second you get onto. Our website and if you comply to have, or you agree to have that data collected or you want to opt out of that. Mm-hmm. Now with Colorado, there's something called implied consent.
Darby: And what that means is if you are, if you, if you don't opt out, And you continue to use the site. Because some people just keep scrolling until the thing goes away. Or they click the button and click yeah. Just ignore it. Yeah. Yeah. If you do that well you're, you're implying consent. Therefore, your data will be collected by those sites.
Darby: So if you care about your data getting protected or, or not getting tracked, make sure you reject or opt out of those Yeah. Features. Further, you also need to have very specific terms of conditions. And usually, that's a page that kind of goes into detail on all the terms and conditions of you using the website.
Darby: What, again, what data is collected, et cetera, et cetera. You have to, I, I'm pretty sure you have to identify which third-party processors are collecting your data as well and outline what that is. And then from there, with California and Colorado, and I think. Other states as well that you have to, in most cases, log the settings that your users agreed to.
Darby: That way if they come back to the site or something like that, you, they don't have to re-op out and all that stuff. So we just covered
Cameron: a ton of things. Yeah. Of like Okay. So you have to have a database Yeah. That is collecting this information. Yep. You can't just have a "I accept or I decline"
Cameron: You know, here's my terms and policy and that's it. You actually have to collect that information, which for the most part means you probably need a third party to help you manage these things. Like trying to build your own mm-hmm. Tool for this would have a high expense for a dev team to create and all that other stuff.
Cameron: So, so I would highly recommend you go, go get it. Yeah. And use a third party like US Watermark. You know what? Go find. Go find a solution. Mm-hmm. That's gonna cover you for all these things.
Cameron: Hey, sorry for interrupting your video. I'm Cameron, vice president of Watermark, and I wanted to tell you a little bit about our CRM learning tool.We just develop it. It's free for you all. The link is in the description below. We're gonna cover things like utilization of your CRM, and automating those mundane tasks that you have to take care of every day. You know, hitting those sales numbers, if those are things you're struggling with. Jump on over there.We're gonna learn together and we'll see you there.
Cameron: Another thing you just brought up that I think is really important that the users need to know about is these policies are constantly changing and different states are coming online with different rules and regulations. So like either you gotta hire a legal team that's gonna be able to handle that, or again, you go to a third party.
Cameron: Yeah, my recommendation again, go to a third party, yes. That can handle this information. Because for you to, to maintain mm-hmm. A legal team that's gonna be able to manage this, and I'll just use Watermark as an example. We went to try and find illegal people to find this, and it was like, almost impossible.
Cameron: Most lawyers don't understand these rules and laws. Right. There's no precedent. Yeah. So, so you have to, you have to really be careful in finding people that know what's going on.
Darby: Right. And, and here's the crazy part is like, let's say your web, I mean, it's a website is on the internet. It's, it's global.
Darby: You have. Global access to that site. So you, if you want to be compliant for California, Colorado, Utah, and like also Europe, GDPR because there, there's all these liabilities. Well, guess what? Colorado attorneys only know Colorado Law Cal. So you would need a legal team and every single state that has a privacy policy for you to be compliant and have, each of them review it from the perspective of each state's laws.
Darby: And even then with the newer states. These lawyers have no idea what's, what's happening. Mm-hmm. Or they, or a precedent. So they, they actually don't know how to act or they won't, like, they won't sign the, their name next to like, this is Yeah. This is compliant. Yeah. Because they just simply don't know. We ran into that again.
Darby: Like you Yeah. Right. Thought our agency and that, that's not even including
Cameron: G R E, which Yeah. Like, yeah. The European side of things, which is like a whole nother, like, again, you should be compliant there too if you are doing anything in Europe. Yep. So, yeah, there's just a ton here that needs to be thought about.
Cameron: Yeah. In my opinion, if you have a website, you need to have at this point in time, a privacy policy, and a cookies policy. Yep. Terms and conditions like these are all things that you just can't avoid anymore unless you want to get here, here's another thing just for, you know, viewers here, is that.
Cameron: Unfortunately, there are bad characters out there that are just looking to go sue somebody. Yes. And you are low-hanging fruit if you don't have something.
Darby: Right? Well, so specifically with Colorado that is, you're somewhat protected to a d degree, from bad actors simply because only, the attorney general can officially what is it fine you or put you through, I guess, The lawsuit.
Darby: Lawsuit kind of thing. Yeah. But here's the thing, people can report you to the attorney general now.
Darby: Exactly, exactly. Your competitor could report. Yeah. Competitor. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. We're giving you ideas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't do that.
Darby: Exactly. But in Utah, they are actually one of the biggest differentiators so far, cuz I, I don't know if they're gonna amendment, amend it before they go live because this is problematic. You can do civil litigation, and civil suits. Based off of not complying on websites. So, yeah. So yeah, there, it's gonna be insane there cuz there might be law firms that are just targeting a bunch of sites or are getting prepared to do that.
Darby: If you don't have a privacy policy, they just like Yeah. Immediately sue you and to make money. Or there are again people who can sue each other. Yeah. So that's gonna be really interesting to see how that plays out. So you're, you're absolutely right as far as the, you wanna minimize your risk. Yeah.
Cameron: And let's just face it, almost every site has some sort of analytics. Yes. So, and I mean, if you have a form Yeah. You're collecting data. So Yeah. If you have a contact us page that has collecting information mm-hmm. You're collecting data. Yep. So really in the end of this, I think the big conversation there is if you don't have a policy, if you don't have, you don't know what's going on, reach out to somebody like us.
cameron: Yes. Go to a, third party find, find a solution. To not get in trouble with this type of stuff. Uhhuh. Anything else you want to add to the viewers of, of like,
Darby: well, yeah. One, one thing I I do wanna mention is just like, even if your site doesn't have, like, I, I really, these days, pretty much every site has some sort of tracking on their, on their website.
Darby: But even if you think, if you don't, you're in the dark ages by Yeah. Yeah. That'd be like if you have a website with
Cameron: like no analytics
Darby: in it. Yeah. What's the point? Or,
Cameron: or, or a form
Darby: like Yeah, I don't like why you even have a website. Hey, I don't know what it's for. I, yeah, maybe you could have just had a Google business page.
Darby: Yeah, yeah. But like, assuming you, you are, you care about competing for your competing business, right? Assuming that's the case, which I think our viewers are if you if you are doing that, you need to anticipate how users are gonna. User interaction and engagement will change in the future, right?
Darby: So you ever go to a website or a link and it says like, Hey before you go, like, there's like a red flag or lock that says like, this site isn't secure. Because they don't have, like ss there's no world certificate yet. I, I'm pretty sure in the future that's gonna be something like, this site collects your data without consent kind of thing.
Darby: Or at the very least, people are gonna get so used to seeing privacy policies and, and opting out of them or, or, or just that interaction that if you go to a site that doesn't have that popup, you're not gonna feel safe.
Cameron: Well, Darby, thanks for coming on. Oh yeah. And talking about privacy policies and we will catch you all next time.
Cameron: Thank you so much for watching and subscribing to the Watermark Water cooler. We value your opinion and want to deliver the best content possible. To do that, we need your comments and feedback. What do you wanna see or learn? Tools, techniques, behind the scenes. Comment below and make your idea our next video.
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