Web Design Business with Josh Hall

334 - Selling Website Privacy Policies with Hans Skillrud of Termageddon

• Josh Hall

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Ah privacy policies…your favorite aspect of web design, right?

Yeah me neither but day by day, it’s an aspect of websites that becomes more and more important with new privacy laws being passed in the states along with other countries, even outside the EU with regards to GDPR compliance. 

So, to help us make sense of where things are at with website privacy policies, I’m excited to bring back on to the podcast, my friend and privacy policy expert Hans Skillrud of Termageddon.

In this chat, we cover:

  • How to better understand what we need to do as web designers for privacy
  • How we can help clients by selling privacy policy plans to them
  • The difference between privacy on contact form submissions versus cookie contents and “behind the scenes” privacy and much more

I highly recommend using Termaggedon for your auto-updating privacy policies. You can use it as an upsell on your hosting/maintenance plan or sell it one off to clients so they don’t have to worry about it!

It’s what I use on my privacy policy page and what my agency uses as an upsell for our plan.

Get all links and resources mentioned along with a full transcription at:
https://joshhall.co/334.

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Hans Skillrud:

You remember how earlier we're talking about their state like group one, which is like data that's typed out and submitted to us. But then there's group two, stuff behind the scenes. Cookie consents are to manage the stuff behind the scenes, to get consent first before we let those things behind the scenes run. Whereas a contact form is more that other group where they're typing out their data, so that's not really involving a cookie consent.

Hans Skillrud:

What I would say is a good practice is always having a checkbox that says I agree to the privacy policy. Not all laws require that, but just for simple purposes. If you're like I don't want to think any further. What should I do? Add a checkbox to your contact forms that say I agree to the privacy policy, because that gives you a timestamp the moment someone consented to your privacy policy when submitting their data to you. Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast, with your host, josh Hall, helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love.

Josh Hall:

Hello, friends, here with you to discuss and dive into probably the most fun aspect of web design. Probably the most fun aspect of web design privacy policies. Yes, something that I've talked about on the podcast. Well, I've had guests on the podcast to enlighten me and other web designers around the world about how to protect ourselves with privacy policies, how to stay compliant with what's going on right now with privacy laws in different states, countries abroad and, of course, the EU with all the GDPR compliance stuff going on. And today, at the time of this release, a little after halfway through 2024, there's been a lot of things changing and going on in the world of website privacy policy, so so excited to bring back on.

Josh Hall:

You know, if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know who this is Hans skill route of term again, which is the privacy policy uh, auto updating tool that I use personally from my side at joshhallco. My agency uses it for our maintenance plans. We use it as an upsell for maintenance plans to make sure every one of our clients has a privacy policy that's auto updated, and you can do that as well. But if you have a lot of questions about what is privacy policy and how does that work on websites? What do you need to do to make sure your clients and your website itself is compliant? How do you sell it? How do you package these up? You package these up. If you're curious about the difference between privacy on submitted data through like contact forms versus behind the scenes data, which is, you know, for cookie consents and things like that, then this conversation, I think, is really going to help you out. Hans is a wealth of knowledge on this and is always really transparent, and my favorite thing about Hans is this could be like the most boring topic ever in web design, but somehow Hans makes it fun. So here we go.

Josh Hall:

Here's Hans of term again, talking selling website privacy, privacy policies for you and your clients, and we do a bit of a one on like a one oh one on what privacy is and what it covers. And if you have not yet checked out term again, make sure to use my link if you would, because you'll get some additional resources and you'll get I think right now they're giving two free agency license. Uh, anyway, there's a special offer for you. Go to joshhallco slash term again. If you're having trouble spelling that like, I probably would just go to the show notes for this episode, which will be found at joshhallco slash, three, three, four and you can check that out and upsell it again. Yes, it's a small subscription fee to Termageddon, but you upsell it on your hosting and maintenance plan for all of your clients and it benefits them too. So highly recommend it.

Josh Hall:

Oh, and before we dive in, if you're catching this before Hans presents, he's actually going to be our guest speaker in July of 2024 in Web Designer Pro, where he's going to do a much more in-depth visual look at privacy policies and a lot of what we talk about here more visually, along with a live Q&A. So make sure, if you haven't already join Web Designer Pro and if you're catching this, later on you'll be able to see the replay of that guest expert training. All right, here's Hans, let's talk privacy policies. You know how it rolls. I'm going to work the shot bong in at some point.

Hans Skillrud:

Of course you will. I should have a prop ready to go actually.

Josh Hall:

My goal for every conversation with you is to work in the shop long, even if it's on a left field.

Hans Skillrud:

There's been a few partners over the years. I'm like, oh, I heard you invented shop. I'm like, how do you know this? And they're like Josh told me. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's right.

Josh Hall:

Oh, that's so great. Classic. Oh, I feel honored. You know the owner of the shop bong and subsequently the owner of Termagant. I love how you just went from like left field to right field, like completely you know, yeah for sure, I used to be quite a different person.

Hans Skillrud:

Yeah so, but I'm happy this Termagant is a lot calmer of a business. You know, I'm not going to 50 fraternities, you know, over a few months. And yeah'm, what was it? 50 colleges, 200 fraternities over six months? Um, yeah, it was.

Josh Hall:

uh, it was something it was you live a calmer life now, but I imagine it's a more uh, maybe not a dangerous life, but a more complex life now, I would imagine, with privacy right for sure.

Hans Skillrud:

Yeah, that like um, it would turn with shopper. I was concerned like people were gonna over drink themselves, um, and then with uh, you know what term. Again, I'm always stressed out like uh, you know, um, oh, do we ever miss anything? But but the stresses of do we miss anything has kind of been removed just because we have like thousands of law firms using us at this point. So I feel pretty good that our product's been battle tested, whereas shop long it could be any night that someone's just chugging you know 15 shots of vodka.

Josh Hall:

I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers who would still take you up on shop bong yes, yeah, I feel like that one's got more uh, more downside yeah, yeah, you lose a case. That's that's the down sell, that's like they lose a case and then that's the shop bong you send. You send them the shop bong afterwards or it's the it's, it's even you know they win a case, it's shop bong. It shop bong really is for all life's.

Hans Skillrud:

That's true situations that's a good way to good, a good way to look at it.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, I'm gonna be the new ceo for shop bong in my next endeavor.

Hans Skillrud:

I can tell we can relaunch that thing together.

Josh Hall:

We're going to keep this entire intro in, by the way, Hans, because this is good. So, from Shotbong to privacy and terms and legal lawsuits for websites. We've been on the podcast a few times, so we don't need to rehash your story or anything. But what's going on now, 2024, halfway through this year? Yeah, what's the landscape like now of online lawsuits, privacy, all that stuff.

Hans Skillrud:

Well, I'm happy you clarified that question, because I thought you were talking about alcohol still and wanted to talk about shop on. So stronger than ever, things are great, yeah. So you know, in the compliance world, our industry is getting more regulated. You know, since the time we've done another, or since our last recording, I think, about seven or eight privacy laws have gone into effect, and since we, when we agreed to book this recording, four more laws have been passed that will go into effect later this year or in 2025. So you know, the web industry is getting regulated. Whether we want to accept that or not is up to us as agency owners, but on paper it's being regulated and you know.

Hans Skillrud:

What's happening here is you know people's names, their email addresses, their phone numbers. This is all personal information, and that's what governments around the world are trying to regulate and protect. That's not a bad thing. I mean, that's a good thing. The vast majority of people I meet are they want people to have privacy rights. It's just, you know, as website owners, we want to launch a website and have it be accessible to people from all over, but the fact is, privacy implications can then occur, and 2024 has not been any exception. In fact, I would say it's a little bit more concerning than ever before.

Hans Skillrud:

Right before recording this, I wanted to make sure we covered SIPA, for example, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, a 30-year-old privacy law which was intended I mean just to put that in perspective 30 years ago. It means that this law existed before even google existed. But this law got passed back in the day to protect people from tracking technologies associated with phone calls and basically it was like hey, if you're tracking, if you're having phone calls with californians and you're secretly recording like those calls through like third-party tracking technologies, you could be sued if you didn't get proper consent first. Well, turns out there's an attorney out there in California suing business owners left and right website owners who are using tracking technologies on their website without properly getting consent from their website visitors.

Josh Hall:

We have reason to think that they, yeah, yeah, is that CIPA? That's correct, the Child Internet Protection Act.

Hans Skillrud:

No the California Invasion of Privacy Act.

Josh Hall:

Oh gosh, I know there's so many other Two in the same name. Oh no yeah.

Hans Skillrud:

They're going to and just like, what is it? Cpa, the Colorado Privacy Act, and I think it's the. There's another CPA out there, I forget which other uh at the top of my head what that acronym also stands for, but but yeah, there's so many privacy laws that we have matching act, um, uh, abbreviations now for them.

Josh Hall:

So okay, so, oh. So this is so, sippa, the children's internet protection protection, which is great, protects people from seeing stuff they shouldn't on the internet or shop on videos, stuff like that.

Hans Skillrud:

But, uh, so this one's california based okay, gotcha, yes yeah, and and just like all privacy laws, it protects californians, so it doesn't matter where you're located. So you know, if you have any sort of tracking technology installed on your website and you're getting traffic from california, you could be at risk of of these. You know, I hate to say it, but ambulance chasers um, targeting website owners like, and that's what. And I do mean that and I don don't mean to offend anyone, but I'm married to an attorney for one. But the reality is this law was created for phone call tracking and someone's recently reinterpreted to target website owners. And what is a tracking script? My gosh, it could be so many things. I mean, it's a YouTube video embed for all things. Youtube embeds trackers just to understand what is this website viewer watching and what's their interest, and everything like that. Tracking is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just.

Hans Skillrud:

What's frustrating now is that we have this law that could result in people getting sued, and there's big companies. In our blog article where we cover this, we talk about how there's big companies like CNN, stitch Fix, doordash, who've already gotten fined massively or sued massively for this. But also I'm directly aware of several agency partners who've called me saying that their customers have gotten their non-Termagant customers have gotten these demand letters where they're wanting $5,000 per website visitor whose rights were infringed upon from California. So I mean, it's just like you get 10 visitors from California, I'm out of business, you know. Like that'd be terrible. So anyways, long story short, we saw this happening. We released coverage for it At the time of this recording, we stand as the only generator to be actively covering SIPA and in my mind I feel like that's just such a good demonstration of like we're constantly monitoring these changes.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, you guys are on it yeah.

Hans Skillrud:

Well, thank you, and and yeah, we'd, we'd we'd rather overdo it than underdo it when it comes to this, because we'd rather give people the option to add these features to their site to rather than not recommend at least considering it, and then they end up getting sued. We took action, we released compatibility. We currently still stand as the only generator to be covering this, and I don't want to get too much in the weeds here. But if you're sitting there being like, well, what's CPRA? Doesn't CPRA require a cookie consent banner? It does, but CIPA, california's other privacy law, requires you to be opted out by default, and what that means is that California has two completely conflicting privacy laws when it comes to getting consent. So, california, you got to love them, you know. You got to love the regulations over there. They're keeping us in business, that's for sure.

Josh Hall:

I'll say for every web designer who's probably thinking like both of us, where it's like this is such a freaking pain in the ass. Why is you know? My life's difficult enough building websites and handling clients and everything else but I do try to find the positive in this as the user and I think about right now I'm getting so many dang jank texts and calls about medical insurance. Somehow my information got out to and I don't know, we did have to change our family medical insurance because our premium doubled from last year. I'm like this is ridiculous. It's more than our mortgage. So I was like we got to figure something else out. I don't know if, in my search on that, if somehow my data was exposed, maybe that's very possible. But I mean honestly, hans, like probably at least two or three times a week I'm getting texts and calls that are like we offer the best solutions for medical insurance and yeah, it's just all spammy. It's terrible.

Hans Skillrud:

Yeah, so all these companies who have the kind of thing that can happen right A hundred percent and think, like your data at some point was submitted somewhere and then they just took your data. As an Ohio resident, you don't have any privacy rights right now, so they can't you can't, you can't even tell them get rid of my data. They don't have to honor it, which is just the gnarliest thing. Maybe under hipaa, because you are dealing with medical, so maybe maybe there's something there. But your data has now been shared with how many who knows how many third parties who are who have your medical data and are soliciting you like, and it's first and foremost annoying. But secondly, like, not everyone wants their medical data and are soliciting you like, and it's first and foremost annoying. But secondly, like, not everyone wants their medical data to be owned and operated by third party companies who are then soliciting, trying to make profit, profit off that fact. It's just disgusting.

Hans Skillrud:

Like, and granted, like, when I started term again, I was just an agency owner who was sick and tired of not knowing what to do for website policies. You know like. That being said, I've gone full on into the privacy realm, running Term Again with my wife, and so now I'm coming from more of a. These days, I'm more interested in the privacy rights that people are getting and I care more about it. But for the average person, I think really, term Again is a means to an end and that's fine. If that's all they want in terms of their journey with us, that's great. But I find myself more and more passionate about like wanting to just ensure that privacy laws actually protect people, that they're, they don't encourage ambulance chasers to just start attacking people and, most importantly, it stops the phone calls and text messages of companies who should not have your data, having your data and trying to do it. The worst case scenario profit driven thing. You know profit driven things like to to try to try to sway you into purchasing things.

Josh Hall:

So it's interesting. I did not know anyone personally who had had a lawsuit from some sort of privacy issue until I have a friend of mine who worked for a couple different agencies here in town and they had designed a site for a big nationwide franchise and then that company got sued after they launched their website because they were missing alt text on images and I think there were some other privacy stuff in there too. It was like it wasn't a massive deal, but it was a ten thousand dollar fine and the the you know it wasn't a make or break to this franchise. Frankly, it would have been like I was paying, you know a hundred bucks probably, but it was still. I don't know how much they charged that website, but 10k on top of something is just a fine, is a big deal.

Josh Hall:

So all that to say. Like I know these aren't fear tactics and, um, I know some people are like, yeah, that a lot of people are playing fear tactics with that industry. But I know you and Donata, like you guys, are not. That is not your game, that is not your style. Like I know, this is actually a pretty dang serious thing.

Hans Skillrud:

Yeah, no, for sure, and I think, with Missing All Techs, that is related to accessibility lawsuits, which are not the same as privacy Priv related to accessibility lawsuits, which are not the same as privacy, privacy lawsuits and fines.

Hans Skillrud:

They don't really make the headlines as much. I mean, you see the news about Facebook getting fined a billion dollars or Google getting fined a billion dollars here or there, but the reality is there are one person, companies getting dinged for this stuff. It's just it hasn't really made the headlines like accessibility lawsuits have. Granted, it's not, as it's not happening as much as accessibility lawsuits right now, and that's kind of what I just think.

Josh Hall:

So those are more prevalent than privacy lawsuits.

Hans Skillrud:

Yes, yeah, accessibility lawsuits, I always say, is about three, four years ahead of privacy lawsuits.

Josh Hall:

Like what we're saying. I would have thought they've been swapped.

Hans Skillrud:

I would have thought so too, because privacy laws have existed Well, actually, no accessibility laws have existed longer. Technically, I think so. Either way, I think, um, what matters here is that regular, these are regulations, both accessibility, privacy and privacy. I think privacy, personally, is a few years behind. I think it's only a matter of time until there's like more and more of these ambulance chasers. I think this is the first year we've started to see them come out.

Hans Skillrud:

Um, also, the fines that are being issued are certainly concerning and and yeah, I hate being the one to be doing the fear-based approach. I know our name is term again, which almost is meant to be fear, but it's more so meant to be fun and like trying to make it lighthearted, like all right, let's figure out a solution here. Um, and I think for us it's like just a balancing act, because we want to state facts but we don't want to like overdo it. We're like trying to scare people in, like you know, I think really, what it comes down to it is as agency owners, I don't want it on my conscious that I did, I made a legal decision for my client. Like I don't want to be thinking to myself oh, my clients are too small for this, so I'm not even going to bring it up Like that. To bring it up Like that's where I think a mistake gets made. I really feel like it should be.

Hans Skillrud:

The agency should explain to their clients like, hey, I helped build contact forms for you, I help install the analytics tools. These are good examples where you're collecting data like names and emails. That's regulated. You may need policies for your website and let the client decide from there what they want to do about it. And, josh, I know you know, but we have that waiver that makes it just incredibly easy just to copy and paste and send it to. The websites we build today are going to be facing the laws of tomorrow, so get the documentation in place that you educated your client that, hey, even though I built these tools for you that help you collect data, I'm not responsible for you complying with laws. It's your responsibility.

Josh Hall:

Is that waiver a part of a Termageddon account, remind me? Or is that something free that we could offer as a template or something?

Hans Skillrud:

We can do both. So by default we offer to our agency partners, so like if, if you go to joshhallco, slash term again, you'll be brought to our form where you not just get one free license but you get two free licenses but term again and then the ability to resell or refer our solution. But that's when you'll get kind of like a treasure trove of pre-written assets that we've written up, Just things that agencies have asked me to create for them over the years. So we publicly list them. But I'll also add a link, just because if someone's like I don't want to deal with term again Hans sounds way too spastic of a person for me to work with. Like cool, just take the waiver and just get rid of the parts that mentioned term again, and that's totally fine.

Josh Hall:

I would love to include that in the show notes for anyone who's not yet using term. Again, I would love to include that in the show notes, for anyone who's not yet using the term again.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, absolutely, and it kind of reminds me, oddly, of my maintenance and hosting and security plan that I did for clients, like for anyone who hasn't been through my maintenance plan. Course, there's all sorts of things you can call a support plan or a care plan, but I always, back in the day, it was maintenance and security and same thing. I tried not to do the fear-based approach talking about security, but the reality was I had sites that got hacked and got taken down because we didn't have any monitoring or security on them. So, in the same way, I feel like it's very similar to term again, it's like you're not pushing something unnecessary. You have a service because there are things that can happen, whether they're few and far between or less than accessibility. My case right now is a perfect example of somehow my data got out and I'm getting multiple calls a week for health insurance Like I'm all set, I don't need it. Stop, I'm about to change my number. It's almost to that point.

Hans Skillrud:

For sure. And when we're knowingly in an industry that's regulated and we're choosing not to bring it up because we don't think it's a big deal, or oh, my clients are too small for this, you've just made a legal decision for your client. Why? That is, in my opinion, as you build out more and more sites running all on that same logic. It's just a matter of time until someone gets dinged. And my thought is like be the one to take the step forward to educate your clients about these regulations so that they understand it's their responsibility to comply with laws Like not only are you professionally representing yourselves, cause no one can deny the fact that these things are legally required You're protecting yourself with documentation and, hopefully, giving your clients the opportunity to not get fined or sued. You know, because and I always feel like it's it's the time that I don't recommend it that my clients get like something in trouble. That always happens, like I always feel like when I don't recommend something, that's when something goes wrong. So there's always there's always that, too, to consider.

Josh Hall:

I think it might be helpful to for those, whether they're new or established as a web designer, to talk about the different like I guess, like the leaky areas of a website that are privacy focused. So you mentioned contact forms, um tracking. What other areas of a website are red flags or um pain points for privacy, potential privacy issues?

Hans Skillrud:

Yeah, so, um. So privacy policy exists to comply with privacy laws, and some privacy laws require a cookie policy and a cookie consent solution. But I'm going to answer your question but kind of keep all three of those assets in mind a privacy policy, a cookie policy and a cookie consent solution. So I wouldn't say they're red flags. I would just say that modern websites are built to generate leads and make constant improvements to the website. I don't think anything is wrong. I don't think collecting data is wrong. I think that's a great thing. But let's start off with the first one a contact form. When you ask people to submit their name and email, names and emails are regulated under every single privacy law. Every single privacy law regulates the collection of personal information, which includes names and emails. So when you're building features on a website that collect data whether it's typed out through, like a contact form, or maybe it's collected behind the scenes through analytics tools, tracking pixels, advertising features we're collecting data. And that's when the alarm bells should be going off that, ah, I'm building something for this customer where they now may need to comply with laws, and that's where the waiver comes into place. The main items that I see as an agent or as someone who works with agency partners, is forms which not only typically collect data, but they also share that data. Because when someone submits a contact form, I always ask the customer do you receive an email in your inbox with that person's contact details? They always say yes and I always say, well, that's a good example of sharing data with your email service provider. So contact forms are not only where you're collecting data, you're actually sharing that data with your email service provider, whether it's Gmail, g Suite, outlook, any third party email system. The second place is email newsletter subscriptions or digital downloads, like download our digital asset. And then there's e-commerce, of course, collecting sensitive data, sharing that data with payment processors and so forth, and that's all data that's typed out and submitted to us. That's like part number one. Then there's part number two. Part number one where people are typing stuff out. I feel like that's a lot more easy to understand because it's like oh, someone types it out and submits it to me. Okay, I'm collecting and sharing that data Easy.

Hans Skillrud:

Part number two is where it's like stuff behind the scenes to make the website a great experience or make improvements to the website, and that's where things, I think, get a little tricky for us because, as agency owners, we've been getting all these free products from companies like Google and Facebook to implement into our website. We embed YouTube videos, recaptcha, google Maps, vimeo videos. There's so many features we embed into the website, whether it's visible on the front end, like a video embed, or invisible but being collected behind the scenes, like Google Analytics and that's where things get a little bit more hairy. But just in general, those are features that collect IP address, device information and information regarding people's interactions with the website for the purposes of analytics, security and advertising, and that's yet another segment where data is being collected, and there's privacy laws that can apply to you because of that.

Hans Skillrud:

So a privacy policy, a cookie policy, a cookie consent solution those are all things that are needed under the laws that apply to you and they need to make specific statements, and really that's what Termigan's out to do. We're there to find the laws that apply to you, provide the disclosures you're required to make, and then what's unique is like push updates to your policies whenever these laws change or new ones go into effect. So you know, I think. I think what Termageddon introduced to the world was that, like, policies can't be the static thing we just put on a site and forget about, like no things are changing. More laws are passing, fines are increasing, number of fines are increasing, number of lawsuits are increasing. You have to have a means to keep this up to date over time and that's obviously what we're trying to do with term again for clients.

Josh Hall:

Well, what you just laid out there was like the perfect overview video of what privacy is on a website, the different levels. I actually really appreciate that visual of like the front end of privacy and then the kind of the backend is a little bit hidden, tracking things that you wouldn't see or you're not actually submitting.

Josh Hall:

So that's actually really helpful for me to clarify for clients too. So they you wouldn't see or you're not actually submitting. So that's actually really helpful for me to clarify For clients too, so they understand there's two levels. There really is kind of a front end and a back end, just like on a website. There's the front end, there's the copy, the images, the design, and then there's the code behind that You're not seeing. You guys started out with the embed privacy update that updates automatically. That's what was what got me turned on a term again, because I was somewhat familiar with privacy and I was like am I going to have to update this myself every week or every month? No way. So thank goodness there's the auto generated privacy. You guys have the cookie consent forms and that option. Now I know you're cooking up something else. Do you want to kind of shed light on what this next big piece that you guys are up to, for sure?

Hans Skillrud:

And I also want to know one term again license also includes a disclaimer, a terms and an end user license agreement if you need it. So so that's one thing we're really focused on. We try to set up a pricing where it's one hundred nineteen dollars a year and our agency partners can buy it wholesale, one at a time, or they can just offer their affiliate promo code to their clients and receive recurring commissions. But that price point includes absolutely everything to protect a website, so like everything from privacy to terms to cookie disclaimer, all that stuff. So I just want to note that and yeah, we are 23 months in the works, but we are about to release our new app. It's so much around the corner that I think, between when we're recording this and when I believe you're planning to push this live, we should have it released. So we're really excited about that because, I mean, josh, we've been working long enough together. You know that I've worked with quite a few agency partners over the years and I've calls with I'm not kidding thousands of customers, um, so we've learned a couple things and and we made the decision to rebuild the app to kind of support where we see the future going um, major ui improvement and um. And yeah, the new app is going to serve as the foundation to where the direction we want to take the company. So, um, you isn't coming with the first release, but it's coming right after.

Hans Skillrud:

But we're going to launch throughout the EU. I know we've had a lot of customers asking about that. We're going to implement a scanning feature to help expedite the setup process for both our reseller and affiliate partners and their clients, of course. And yeah, and actually TermiGuider is coming as well. That's coming right out the gate with the new launch. But every single question within our tool has like a 10-second clip of me explaining how to answer that question, so like if you don't know how best to answer a question. Basically, there's a video helper right on page that's called TermiGuider and it's me kind of explaining, like you know, this is how people answer this and stuff like that. So there's a lot of nice features. We're hoping that helps expedite the setup right, provides education and has people feeling great about their product, about what they get in return from using is this like mobile based app or desktop or both or what like?

Hans Skillrud:

I'm curious what the need is for an app with this yeah, I'm sorry, web app, it's a, it's a, it's a desktop app. The the vast vast majority of people use us on their website, so we haven't really considered mobile. Uh, friendliness or anything really. Um, I mean, granted it is, but if you're creating policies, we just found like 98 percent of our users go to desktop to do it. So we'll probably stay focused on that. But, uh, but you know if, if privacy goes like hardcore and that there's like a new law passing every week, heck, maybe we do launch a mobile app just to keep our customers more in the know, if they want to be like something they could access right from their phone. But but right now that's not in the cards. What's the?

Josh Hall:

where are they like? I just phrase it like this but the folks who are causing the biggest stir in the privacy realm? You mentioned California. Are there other states that are not culprits of privacy, but just ones that are leading the charge on this? Are there certain countries? I mean, obviously we've talked in depth in the past about everything that happened at the start of all this, really with the GDPR, compliance and everything in the EU, but it sounds like certain states are actually pursuing this more aggressively than maybe countries I don't know. You tell me where. Where are like the, the, the critical areas that are privacy focused?

Hans Skillrud:

Yeah, that's a really good one, um so. So in the U? S, it's California, without a doubt. Um, california, not California has three privacy laws SIPA, cpra and CalOPA, and there's lawyers suing under CIPA. So that would be where, I would say, is the primary focus. And, as a reminder everyone, privacy laws protect people. They don't care where your business is located. So if you're sitting there thinking, oh great, I'm not in California, well, no, you're not technically out of the dark yet, because if your website gets traffic from Californians, then those laws can apply to you. And that's why this stuff is so complex, because, regardless of where you're located, what matters is whose data are you collecting. But in the US, without a doubt, it's California.

Hans Skillrud:

Granted, there's like 12 other states, I think, at the time of this recording, that have laws that have either passed and gone into effect or are about to go into effect. If you're asking me for a prediction, I think New York will be next. I think New York will pass a bill. They have several bills out right now. One of them in particular, I think, will pass, and it's going to allow New Yorkers to sue any website owner located anywhere for collecting as little as an email address in a contact form. I do believe that one is going to pass, and then I think that's just like what we saw with accessibility lawsuits out of New York. I think we're going to see the same with privacy In Canada.

Hans Skillrud:

I would say specifically, right now it's Quebec. Quebec's Bill 64 just turned into Quebec Law 25. And that's a new privacy law that a lot of people in Quebec are pretty concerned about. We've had a major uptick in Quebec, businesses getting set up with us and then in Europe, specifically the EU, and even more specifically I'd say Germany, tends to be where the most people come from for complaining about privacy rights. So there's like little blips of areas where I would say it's the highest amount of penalties being issued right now, at the time of this recording.

Josh Hall:

So explain how this works, hans, because I'm trying to think, if you have a cookie consent and somebody denies, what happens if they submit a contact form? So would they get kicked out of that potentially? Yeah, how does that work?

Hans Skillrud:

yeah, so, um, cookie consents exist to get what's called explicit consent, meaning they are opted out by default of tracking technologies like youtube videos can't play until they click accept all where they've consented to their information behind the scenes from being collected and shared with third parties. So you remember how earlier we're talking about their state like group one, which is like data that's typed out and submitted to us, but then there's group two stuff behind the scenes. Cookie consents are to manage the stuff behind the scenes, to get consent first before we let those things behind the scenes run, whereas a contact form is more that other group where they're typing out their data. So that's not really involving a cookie consent. What?

Hans Skillrud:

I would say is a good practice is always having a checkbox that says I agree to the privacy policy. Not all laws require that, but just for simple purposes. If you're like I don't want to think any further. What should I do? Add a checkbox to your contact forms that say I agree to the privacy policy policy, because that gives you a timestamp the moment someone consented to your privacy policy when submitting their data to you.

Josh Hall:

That's gold, that's genius Cool cool.

Hans Skillrud:

So yeah, and I know cookie consents are not everyone's favorite things. I'll withhold my own opinions on them. But what I can say is they exist to comply with laws, like I would. If you don't like them, I still would be. My recommendation, agency owners is let the client decide if they want them or not. Like don't, even though we may not like them. Like the client should be the one to decide if they want to comply with laws or not. So if they want to take it down, just make sure you have it in writing is there a cash on your guys's or with other cookie consents on like?

Josh Hall:

because as a course creator I'm like I don't want to have people have to accept that every time they log on to my site to watch a video. So are there? Yeah, are they cashed within several days or weeks, or how does that work?

Hans Skillrud:

yeah, so you can set it with term again and, I'd imagine, most compliant consent tools. You can set how often do you want to reshow the map or reshow the consent tool, and typically most people just do it by session. So unless the user clears their own browser cache, they're not going to see it again, and that's what helps limit the exposure of it, whereas other companies may say, you know what, show it to them every two months just to kind of keep it fresh on their mind. And really, in my opinion, what matters most is you at least get one level of consent like. So they got their choice. They made their choice, um, and, and they can change their selections later by clicking the fingerprint icon or the privacy settings hyperlink. But but yeah, you, you can set that, um, josh cool.

Josh Hall:

That's great. That's great to know, especially, yeah, for anyone who has videos. There's a site that somebody is going to be returning back to often. Yes, as from a user. I'm so big on conversion and user experience that I try to kind of highlight and get that all in place first. I try to kind of optimize for that Yep With the idea that accessibility, privacy and everything else is in line as much as possible too.

Hans Skillrud:

For sure, and everything else is in line as much as possible, too. For sure, consent tools can definitely create a bump in the road when it comes to conversions and marketing, and all that because, by default, they opt website visitors out of analytics data and stuff like that. But I think this is what I believe is going to happen. I believe that 10 years from now, we're going to look back at these times and be like, remember when we used to just collect people's data and do whatever we want with it. I think 10 years from now, we're going to think that way and I'll give you an example. You know, 10 years ago from today, 10 years in the past, when I was running my agency, ssl certificates they were not a thing that anyone ever really did, unless you needed e-commerce, you know. Know, anything beyond that was just kind of like, okay, it's kind of nice to have, and like nowadays, if you go to a site that's not ssl secure, you don't feel secure, like it's questionable. And I think we're going to see the same with privacy. Like right now, we're agency owners who've been implementing these free tools that help track users, and that's not a bad thing. It's just that, like, there's a lot of data harvesting going on behind the scenes. You know, in our own little way we are those people that are mass calling, or max testing people just like not not as intrusively you know like we're sharing data, though, with companies who use that data for advertising, and so so I say all that to say that, like, cookie consents are what gives you that ability to get consent.

Hans Skillrud:

However, if you're thinking like, how do I avoid a cookie consent, you absolutely can, and I'll give you a good example for YouTube videos. Instead of embedding youtubecom videos, embed youtube-nocookiecom videos. That is YouTube's cookie friendly alternative, and now you don't need consent to load YouTube videos. Ah, I didn't know that. So that's a non-tracking format, and most tools these days offer a privacy friendly embedding option. Just embed the privacy friendly options. Um, and my gosh, you may find yourself not needing to get consent at all and you've really not changed anything about your website. Um, it's just implementing the privacy friendly versions of things. Um, I had no idea you could.

Josh Hall:

I'm to make sure we include this in the show notes. I'm looking at a link right now on how to do that, cool.

Josh Hall:

And you could use Fathom Analytics instead of Google Analytics, because they're GDRP compliant and don't track IP. So that's another way to bypass a cookie consent, exactly. So, by the way, as you well know, in my maintenance planning course I recommend that all of my students use Termageddon as an add-on to the plan, like it's just, it's another add-on to sell for the different tiers of maintenance plans and you could say, like, if a client wants to do really robust type of privacy stuff or they really don't want cookie consents, you can say, well, we could do that. It's a, it's an add on or it's a. It's a different level of support because there is a little, it's a little more tricky to embed the privacy centric videos. So there's almost different ways to like factor in privacy in your plans, in your builds, either all at once or in an ongoing plan.

Hans Skillrud:

I agree and and yeah, I definitely would say like if I was, if I was a term again partner, I would either do the affiliate program to take advantage of the complimentary onboardings that's one thing we do where we can walk the customer through the entire setup and then share the license with the partner at the end of the setup call, and then we pay the partner recurring commission. So with the affiliate program, partners spend nothing out of pocket. You just have clients sign the waiver and connect them to us when they say they want to get set up with Termigodden Super smooth process. But if you're like you know what I want to make some more recurring profit, which is kind of where I found myself as an agency owner, I would go the reseller route.

Hans Skillrud:

I charge 300 bucks setup fee and then charge the $119 a year and buy from Termigodden at $42 a year and make the difference. Or I buy a bulk deal but to confirm, agency partners can buy one at a time from us at wholesale. But yeah, that setup fee is where I think it's best used because, yeah, it takes time to create policy pages, copy and paste the codes and the cookie consents in particular tend to be very grabby. I mean, that's what they are they're doing. They're basically trying to break everything on a website. So, yeah, make sure time is allotted to install the cookie. Consent too.

Josh Hall:

What are some other areas that myself or web designers may not be thinking about? As far as privacy goes on websites, we've covered a lot. See, one question I had, which I posed initially, was like, yeah, where are the leaks in a website that could be a red flag for potential lawsuits or something? I think we've covered most everything to this point with the idea of, like, front end and back end. But yeah, are there any other places on a website or things that are implemented that are glaring? Like oh, actually that could be an issue? Or like the YouTube embed thing. I didn't realize there was an option for that.

Hans Skillrud:

So I would say that we've done a pretty good job at covering um in in general. Where privacy becomes an issue. It's stuff that's submitted by users forms, whether it's contact forms, newsletters, sign up forms, digital product downloads, um or e-commerce and stuff then behind the scenes which are typically embed this video embeds, map embeds, analytic embeds and security embeds like reCAPTCHA, which there is alternatives like friendlycaptchacom, and then advertising tracking behind the scenes. So I feel like that's like 99% of our typical customer in terms of data collection, our typical customer in terms of like data collection.

Hans Skillrud:

What I would say would be interesting to talk about, or just at least make note of, is that you know terms otherwise known terms of service terms and conditions. That's an area where you can have a DMCA disclosure, which stands for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Basically, it's a statement that says hey, if any, if you see any content on our website that's not our property, rather than suing us, just let us know and we'll remove it from the site. It's certainly not like a get-out-of-jail-free card. I wouldn't just recommend doing that in your terms and then just copying everyone else's stuff and putting it on your site. No, I don't recommend that. But has it proven to get people to help create what's called a safe harbor for businesses and help protect them from lawsuits. Absolutely, it has so. So, um, I like a terms for virtually any website, um, but the real intent of a terms is to limit your liability as a website owner.

Josh Hall:

What about copyright? Like blatant copyright infringement, stealing courses, stealing eBooks, stealing any information. I mean, I I've been public about one of my courses being ripped off years ago and we actually came up. I was hired. I hired a company I don't know if we've talked about this I hired a company. It was 300 bucks a month for this company to get my course off of these platforms. That just started spreading and and I just wonder how the hell people sleep at night when they do this crap, because literally I'm paying $3,600 a year just extra just getting these sites ticked down by this, this one company.

Josh Hall:

That was only for one course.

Hans Skillrud:

Out of curiosity. Is it helping? It did help.

Josh Hall:

I stopped only it did help, but it didn't help fully. It was like you get a lot of them off and then you could search it and you could see like eight you know. Uh, at the bottom it would be like this is copyright and friends, we've removed eight sources. The only problem was it just didn't stop completely. So what we actually did in my community web center pro shout out to Michelle, my SEO guru there we came up with an action plan to get reviews from all my students who have been through the course, who I knew would be open to posting a blog post about that course, and they did. We had, I think we had over a dozen students write a big, meaty blog post that was not copy and pasted, but real, authentic content, real results. And now it actually has, like taken up the first few scrolls of Google.

Hans Skillrud:

That's awesome Before you get ripped off.

Josh Hall:

But how are these people not in jail Like?

Hans Skillrud:

can we?

Josh Hall:

freaking sue every one of these people like to their dying end. Like what can we? You know what I mean. Like if, if a mom Paul pizza shop is getting a lawsuit. They just started a go daddy site. They didn't know what the heck was going on. Meanwhile you got this group of people who are ripping courses off and then are they getting sued. Help me, hans, help me, help me. Have you ever seen Dexter?

Josh Hall:

Yes, the killer who kills serial killers. I'm on a mission to make these people pay for hurting the good people of the world, so tell me about that.

Hans Skillrud:

For sure. So I think that's a lot more on the like on the offensive side, where we're going after the people that are stealing, and that's not something I advocate for, and that's exactly why I have my own little disclaimer, for, like you know, a DMCA disclosure is not a get out of jail free, like it does not give you a green light to just start stealing stuff from other people. So my knowledge comes much more from the defense side, which is like putting things in place to limit our liability as website owners. So, although I don't have an exact answer for you right now, at this moment, josh, I bet Donata would.

Josh Hall:

I was just going to ask can we stick Donata on them, Because I bet she would be ruthless and she's out of the office, literally Like we have an office. She's out of the office literally like I, like we have an office. She's out of the house literally right now. Um, but I'm gonna have her call you tonight, I'm gonna have you better have on next and we're gonna talk about how to make copyright infringement.

Hans Skillrud:

People pay, yes, digital no, because it's not fun when people take your hard-earned work and do things with it, and that's why this stuff exists. That's why copyright infringement exists. It's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. Do some people do it unknowingly? Yes, but I get a vibe that people are knowingly doing it to what you've created. Oh, there's a totally profit driven endeavor that they're doing. Yeah, there's a totally different thing.

Josh Hall:

When you like rip somebody's course off or rip somebody's gated material and post it on a site that's like discountcoursescom versus you know, my client Googles. If my client's a steel company and they Google a picture of a steel building and put it on their site to represent steel, that's a whole different ballgame.

Hans Skillrud:

For sure, exactly, yeah. So, um, yeah, I have done how to call you. Obviously, she'll preface it with you, know. Please note, this is not legal advice, but this is exactly what I would do for next time it.

Josh Hall:

please note this is not legal advice, but this is exactly what I would do for next I could be a very, very fun podcast.

Hans Skillrud:

Or bring her on.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, she's always down to chat with you yeah, well, I'll be happy to say takedown czar is the company I use and they did a good job, like I said. They just I was just the point. I'm like I'm paying freaking 300 bucks a month, yeah, for this and it is working, but it's not working all the way. And they basically said, like we do, we do our best.

Hans Skillrud:

You know I hate to say but to be honest I'm I'm kind of happy to hear it's only 300 a month. I thought it was going to be like 3000 a month If this seemed it seemed very like this type of process that you just described. I thought this was like only reserved for, like you know, the, the, the, the CBSs of the world are like super rich.

Josh Hall:

I mean, that was back in 2019 and 20 when I used them. I used them for, I think, about a year and a half, so okay, but still I mean, oh god, this is gonna get me fired up now. So let's see, let's say a year and a half, so 18 months, 300 times 18 out of pocket, I paid well over five thousand dollars just monthly, monthly just to get these taken off. But that's not including the amount of time that I invested in that. That's not including the amount of time that I had to. Thankfully, a lot of my members of Web Presenter Pro and students who have been to my course were cool enough to take time out of their day to make these website, these course reviews for me.

Hans Skillrud:

But then there's you have an awesome community Like I mean, let's be real like the the josh hall community is locked, tied together. It's awesome.

Josh Hall:

I just yeah they're they're just incredible, like they're my tribe. They're amazing, and what was exciting to me is to see how fired up they got. Yeah, you know, but and also the thing with that, too, is just like I don't know how many people are trusting a one of those janky sites because you have to download something that was stolen and pirated, which means what else are you downloading, talk about privacy and everything else. You are exposing your like. If anyone right now is listening to this, I don't know how many people listen to this who are of the type who are downloading illegal content.

Hans Skillrud:

But, um, you're here talking about data exposure, like good luck downloading something like that oh yeah, no, when you download from sketchy sites like you, you haven't found, you haven't realized the value of your own personal data you have not you have not come to terms with you. Your own data matters? Um yeah, because you're just playing roulette.

Josh Hall:

Every time you do that type of stuff, yeah, yeah and and the cost for that I mean, yeah, it was, it was reasonable, but yeah, for I mean, but that was one course, not like a suite, and don't get me wrong.

Hans Skillrud:

Five grand is not. That's not a skip in the park. I mean, that's, that's a lot of money still. I I guess it. Just in my my own mind. It felt like just something like oh, there's a bunch of attorneys scanning websites. That just sounded extremely expensive to me. 300 a month is not fun. That's, that's painful, considering it's just to get your stuff back like it's not even like grow your business.

Josh Hall:

It's literally just to like stop people from stealing from you, like that's not fun, but uh but the reality is going back and that's another highlight of the importance of privacy is like these kind of things, like if there weren't privacy laws which, yes, it's a pain in the ass for web designers a lot of times, but the the opposite of that is what happened to me and what happened to a lot of other people who have their content ripped off is pirates run free digitally and could do anything they want. That is. That is an even scarier world, more frustrating and and even worse off than having pretty rigorous privacy laws. So, in a way, it's a good reminder for me, like anytime I'm frustrated by cookies, consents or whatever I'm like, you know what the opposite is is this situation of yeah.

Hans Skillrud:

Well, yes, cookie consents are defending us from us, our world becoming like a black mirror episode, so let's just all keep that in mind. But, um, you know, I this is not a space. I'm knowledgeable with these courses, though I know there's like a lot of pre-made course type systems like do they offer the ability to somehow like watermark the video, like or somehow like secretly code the video so if that video were to be uploaded, you could draw it all the way back to who originally created it?

Josh Hall:

maybe that's like insane thinking I mean there's definitely I it's almost reminds me of like a chain code from star wars, where there's like the authentic, I mean I guess it would be like an nft or something right. It's like digital art that gets repurposed or stolen or is sold through. I I'm not into that world, but you know any like a piece of art that is is distributed.

Hans Skillrud:

If you want to identify it.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, the original one is like the. It's like the IP address for a quarter before.

Hans Skillrud:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh Hall:

From what I know and the folks who I talked to who are pretty far into the developer side of things, they said pretty much they could rip off anything if they really wanted to.

Hans Skillrud:

Yeah.

Josh Hall:

The question is, though yeah, what's new and what's coming down the road as far as that goes, and I don't know personally how to, how to go about that. So it is not even a matter of being like it like a watermark on a video. It wouldn't matter. You could do something with screenshots if you really wanted to. So, yeah, and there's another thing too. It's like what is chat, GPT and other language models and AI stuff? What are they picking up? Are they picking up course content? That's privacy or should be gated? I don't know, I don't know how that works either. Case in point if somebody chat GPT some of my course content, will that pick up some of the illegal? You know some of my stuff that was distributed illegally. I don't know, I don't know how that works.

Josh Hall:

Interesting why I'm going from like as much as my courses are life changers for people, I've realized like the true value and the education side of thing online now is community, and coaching courses are kind of the entry point. Now, information. Information has been information is shifted from like the end all like that's where you end up. You end somewhere to get the information to. Information is the start of a transformation. That's, that's what I'm trying to say that makes a lot of sense.

Hans Skillrud:

Well, yeah, because everything is constantly changing, especially in our industry. I mean, just in general, everything changes for the you know, steal a community and you can't steal coaching um same thing with what's yeah, there we go oh yeah, once me and donata partner up and we start.

Josh Hall:

You know, I, you know she can be the actual, I'll be the, I'll be the loud voice, and then, uh, and then she can be the enforcer she'll be the enforcer.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, she'll be the one showing up on people's doors. Yeah, and I'll be like she's wild. You are, be careful, this is coming to you. You got what you deserve. Well, before we get kicked off youtube's yeah, that's. This is great man. This I know honestly like. This conversation has really shed some light on the, the differences of types of privacy and cookies and scent and how it works. I hope this gives some clarity to people. And yeah, I was just kind of curious. Oh, there's a kitty.

Hans Skillrud:

Yeah, that was the meow. All pets are welcome on the website.

Josh Hall:

I've got one of my goldens is here wanting to get out and starting the thunder right now, so I think it's freaking her out.

Hans Skillrud:

But uh, I think, uh, our Chicago weather just hit you three hours ago.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, it's just like Jurassic park over here. It sounds like it was a wreck. Well, anything else as we wrap this up, hans is you're going to be coming in shortly after this, by the time we release this. You're going to be doing a guest expert training inside of Web Designer Pro to visually share some things that we can do as web designers. But to cap this off, I'll make sure I link the waiver, some of the links we talked about, you know my link, joshhallco slash termageddon, is our special offer for folks to be able to get signed up with you. And again, just everybody, make it a part of your maintenance plan. It's an upsell, it's an add on anything else. Any final final words of wisdom? In privacy land for right now.

Hans Skillrud:

You know, I feel like we covered so much, but I really just want to re-hit the message that, like none of us got into building websites to deal with regulations not a single one of us so we. So there'll be the opportunity to either embrace this stuff or to continue to pretend it doesn't exist. And my recommendation is to consider embracing it, because all the signs are on the wall, like the paint. What is it? The paintings on the wall? All the signs are on the wall. What's that phrase? The?

Josh Hall:

writings on the wall. There it is. It doesn't sound right, but I wouldn't trust myself.

Hans Skillrud:

I've been known to be kind of bad with those paintings are on the wall.

Hans Skillrud:

The paintings are on the wall, but yeah, the writings on the wall. Like this stuff is becoming a bigger deal. Learn now how to embrace it because, just like how Josh has community and like things we learn from one another and like things we all grow together. Like that's what's going to happen with privacy. Like if you skip it now for a few more years and come in, it's just going to be that much more complex. Like, take a leap, you're in good hands, we'll take good care of you. If you want to try out Termageddon, you know, get two free licenses for life and hopefully you can make some recurring revenue while helping your clients get protected.

Josh Hall:

I can't wait to make a nice little quote image from this, this episode, that says the painting is on the wall. There we go. Well as always, man, what a blast making privacy fun since 2000. When did you guys start term again? 16, 16, yeah, there's your tagline that I grant to you.

Josh Hall:

I like it, yeah, uh until next time, and we'll see inside web center pro here in july, so if anyone has not yet a member of pro, jump on in because we're going to be doing a live training and the replay will be available in the archives there. Uh, always appreciate you, man, keeping me up what's up you up to date on what's going on here.

Hans Skillrud:

So for sure, josh, always a pleasure, take care.

Josh Hall:

Again, super boring conversation. Well, I shouldn't say that, but it was a boring topic, but I hope we made it lively and fun. There's no. I mean, look, if you're going to do some, if you're going to be in an industry where you're, you know you have to deal with something like privacy policies. Let's have as much fun as we possibly can. I so appreciate Hans and his wife, donata, for being two just awesome personalities in this space, because I normally wouldn't want to work with somebody who does privacy policies all day, but man, they're cool. So I hope you enjoyed this one.

Josh Hall:

Go to the show notes for all the links mentioned. I know we did mention quite a few links here on this one. You can find that at episode 334, which will be at joshhallco slash 334. And again, if you are not yet using Termageddon, go to joshhallco slash Termageddon. Use my link because you will get, I think, again a couple free accounts for your clients and use it as an upsell on your maintenance plan. It benefits your clients. You can build more recurring income or you can use it as a bonus just to give one more thing to encourage clients to check out your maintenance plan. So definitely make sure you do that.

Josh Hall:

All the links we cover joshhallco slash 334. All the links we covered josh hallco slash 334. And if you're catching this live, hans will be inside of web designer pro here this month, in july of 2024, sharing ins and outs of website privacy policies and if you're catching this, later on you'll be able to join pro and watch that presentation in the video training archive, which features tons of guest expert trainings which fill in the gaps that I don't cover in my courses, just because there are a lot of things that I don't have expertise in, like privacy policies, but Hans does, and you can get all that more inside of Web Designer Pro. All right, friends, see you on the next episode.