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In this episode Michelle Frechette and Jon Clark talk with Donata and Hans Skillrud of Termageddon about privacy policies: what they are, why you need them, and why keeping them up-to-date is important.
Your name is your name. Your email is your email. Your phone number is your phone number. And humans are greater than businesses.
Remember that. This is your property.
Hans Skillrud, Termageddon
Mentioned in this episode:
- Termageddon
- Termageddon on Twitter/X
- Hans on Twitter/X
- Donata on Twitter/X
- Jonathan Clark on Twitter/X
[00:00:02] Michelle: Welcome to WP Constellations, a podcast exploration of the WordPress universe brought to you by StellarWP.
Welcome to our next episode of WP Constellations, where we explore the WordPress universe through the Stellar lens. And today, my cohost for this episode is Jonathan Clark. Jon is the marketing automation manager at StellarWP. How are you doing today, Jon?
[00:00:30] Jon: I’m doing well. How are you doing?
[00:00:32] Michelle: I’m doing great, thanks. I always love working with you and when we get to actually be on screen together like this, it’s an exciting day. So thank you for co-hosting with me today. I appreciate you being here.
And our guests of the hour, of course, our guests today are Hans and Donata Skillrud from Termageddon. How are you all doing?
[00:00:49] Donata: Doing well, thanks.
[00:00:50] Hans: Rocking it. It’s a little cold at the time of this recording here in Chicago, but outside of that we’re doing.
[00:00:56] Michelle: Yeah, yeah, it’s January. We are recording in January. This will come out very shortly, but if you’re watching this even years to come, we are in the middle of a very cold snap here in the United States. And so it looks sunny, but it’s like, oh, it feels like 31 below. So, yeah, it’s one of those kinds of days for sure.
[00:01:16] Hans: Well, Michelle, I appreciate you and Jon making this time happen for us because we’re recording this right before we’re releasing this right before Data Privacy Day, which is just such a great time of year to have a recording like this because I’m sure everyone couldn’t be more excited to learn about privacy policies and terms and things like that. But the reality is privacy rights are something that I think most people want in this world. I think we as website owners have an opportunity to respect those rights. And happy Data Privacy Day, everyone.
[00:01:47] Michelle: Absolutely. And data privacy, we’re going to talk a lot about this, for sure, but data privacy is more than just making sure that the websites that you frequent or that you do own a website have those security, but it’s also just taking care of your own things. Making sure that, well I got a notification this weekend, that somebody tried to log into my personal Twitter account and I was like, oh yeah, no, I did not authorize that, but let me change that password yet again to make sure that I’m super protected as much as possible. But thank you for two factor authentication on that account and everything else, right? To make sure that suddenly I haven’t lost my Twitter account to some nefarious person out in the world.
[00:02:23] Hans: Absolutely. And that’s what this day is all about. Obviously, businesses have a legal reason to want to comply with laws and stuff like that. But really, this day is all about raising awareness of privacy and the little things that people can do as individuals to make sure that their privacy, they understand who’s collecting your data and what are they doing with it, and what can I do to protect my data? Things like two factor authentication.
[00:02:49] Michelle: It is a very important day and I do hope that even though I would say things in tech aren’t necessarily sexy. Right? Like, hosting isn’t sexy and forms aren’t sexy, but if they’re doing their job right, then the rest of your site can be as sexy as you want it to be because you don’t have to worry about people getting hacked and things like that. So with that little lead in that you did, give us a little bit more. Tell us a little about yourselves and what you do?
[00:03:15] Donata: So I’m Donata Skillrud. I’m an attorney licensed in Illinois and a certified information privacy professional. I’m also the president and legal engineer behind Termageddon. And outside of work, I’m the chair of the American Bar Association’s privacy committee, member of the ABA Cybersecurity Legal Task force, and fellow at the foundation.
[00:03:42] Michelle: You’re one of those people that people say, oh, you do a few things right, or, oh, you’re kind of busy.
[00:03:48] Donata: Just a couple. Yeah.
[00:03:50] Hans: Well, and you just got into knitting.
[00:03:52] Donata: I did just get into knitting. And honestly, I cannot recommend it enough. It’s really fun.
[00:03:58] Michelle: You need something away from the rest of the stuff to pull your mind away at the end of the.
[00:04:02] Donata: Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:04] Hans: She just gave me a huge scarf that she’s been knitting the last couple of days. I’m pumped about it. It’s perfect.
[00:04:08] Michelle: I love it. Awesome. And Hans, tell us about you.
[00:04:12] Hans: Yeah, so I’m Hans. I feel like it’s always rough going against her background. Like, okay, I’m Hans. Like, but my, my story is I ran a twelve person web agency in downtown Chicago for seven years. That’s where I lost all my hair. But it was from that experience, copying and pasting legal policies for my clients, which always felt slimy and awkward when all of a sudden I started dating a privacy attorney and learned that, hey, maybe there’s some better ways to go about this. So we created Termageddon together. And yeah, I help web agencies and advocates of privacy just kind of get the message out about what website policies are, how businesses can protect themselves with it, and talk about our agency partner program, too.
Oh, and outside of work? Outside of work, I’m into, oh, man, I can’t believe I’m sharing this one. But I’m into coin collecting because I’m 95 years old, but I’m really into coin collecting lately.
[00:05:10] Michelle: A numismatist. Is that the right word?
[00:05:12] Hans: Numismatic? Yes. There you go.
Yeah, I get a big magnifying glass, like, stare at coins for my fun lately.
[00:05:21] Donata: We have a lot of friends, obviously.
[00:05:26] Michelle: You’re like, what, 80 years old, knitting and looking at. No, you’re not anywhere near 80 years old.
[00:05:32] Hans: No kidding.
[00:05:33] Michelle: I love it.
[00:05:34] Jon: Can I ask you, from a general person who just maybe started their business and they’re trying to look for options, what is Termageddon? How does it work from that angle?
[00:05:46] Hans: Yeah. So Termageddon is a website policies generator. So I think it’s best to kind of define what policies are. With that being said, please note, this is not legal advice. I’m not providing legal services today. This is for informational purposes. A good husband just knows, like, all right, better do the disclaimer.
But a privacy policy exists to provide the disclosures you’re required under applicable laws. Privacy laws start applying the moment you collect someone’s name or email or any other types of personal information. So if you’re a website owner and you have, like, a contact form, for example, or maybe you have some analytics tools running behind the scenes or security tools, these are great examples of features where you could be collecting personal information. And that’s when privacy laws can start applying to you, which require you to have a privacy policy. So privacy policy exists to comply with laws like privacy laws, terms, and conditions is more like explaining the rules to using a website. So, like, if you have an ecommerce website, you want to explain shipping policies and refund policies and return policies and things like that. So I think the best way to put it is Termageddon is a website policies generator where you can generate policies that provide the disclosures you’re required to make and to help limit your liability as a website owner. And what makes Termageddon special is that after you’ve implemented us into your website policy pages, we monitor privacy laws and then push updates to your policies with new disclosures as new laws pass, which at the time of this recording, there’s already three more laws scheduled to be deployed later this year.
[00:07:23] Donata: Yeah. So in 2024, we have Montana, Texas, and Oregon’s privacy laws going into effect, all of which require updates to privacy policies. And I think it’s also important to note that we know of privacy laws that we think are static. Right? So let’s say UK’s Data Protection Act passed in 2018. We think, okay, great, this law has been passed. Let’s say I’m complying with it today. I don’t necessarily need to worry about anything extra coming up. Well, a lot of these governments across the world are updating their privacy laws because there’s new technologies, new ways of infringing on privacy. So they’re passing new laws or they’re amending their existing laws. So just because you’re compliant today, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can just stop paying attention and you’re good to go in the future.
[00:08:11] Hans: So we’re just trying to be that part that can help monitor these changes and alert our customer to these changes.
[00:08:19] Michelle: A lot of the times I hear people talk about needing a privacy policy and then also terms and conditions, and I know that you all handle that, right? So kind of what’s the difference between having a privacy policy, having terms and conditions, and do they interchange or interact with one another? Can you give us a little bit more on that?
[00:08:38] Donata: They’re really not the same thing. So a privacy policy recounts your privacy practices. So, like, for example, what information are you collecting, who are you sharing it with, what you’re doing with it, and the other disclosures required by privacy laws. Terms of service is more the rules of using your website. So, for example, if you have an account, here’s where we can terminate your account. Or here are the things you can’t post as comments, or here’s my shipping refunds and return policies. And while a privacy policy is governed by privacy laws, terms of service is usually governed by consumer protection laws or other laws like subscription laws. A great example for terms of service. Let’s say you take automatically renewing subscriptions on your website. Well, if you don’t present certain information to a consumer, one of California’s consumer protection laws will actually consider that subscription a gift to the consumer. So anything that the consumer has gotten, it will be considered a gift, and you need to return their money, and you don’t get the goods back. Right. So things like that are what govern the terms of service. It’s more of the rules of using your website.
[00:09:48] Hans: And it’s really designed to help limit your liability. So I like a terms of service for virtually any website because it can contain disclosures like, hey, we offer links to third party sites on our website. We’re not responsible when you click on one of those links. So if you click that link and that site gets hacked, and you get hacked, you can’t come back and sue us. Obviously, it’s written up to be much more formal than how I just explained it.
And if I so may, I’m going to leap back over to Donata’s definition of a privacy policy where she talked about some of the disclosures, like the personal information you collect and with whom you share it. I think a lot of business owners think to themselves, oh, well, I don’t share any data that I collect, which tends to not be the case. And I’ll give you an example. If you have a contact form on your website where someone types out and submits their inquiry to you, and you receive an email in your email inbox, then you are sharing data with your email service provider. If you add that email to ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, or any other third party email marketing software, you are sharing that data with your email marketing provider. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with sharing data. It’s just that is such a good example of the types of disclosures we just need to make in our website policies to respect the privacy rights of our website visitors.
[00:11:02] Michelle: And even if we’re not asking somebody for specific information, like their name and their email address and things like that, let’s say we have a little poll and we’re just asking them, do you like red or blue better? But their IP is associated with that. Is that also something that we need to think about with privacy?
[00:11:19] Donata: Yeah, because IP address would be considered personal information because it can track somebody. So that means that you’re still collecting personal information even though you’re not collecting like names, emails or phone numbers.
[00:11:32] Michelle: Yeah, that makes sense. I’m sorry, Jon, I think I interrupted you.
[00:11:35] Jon: Oh, no, no problem. So I have this question here. So last year, 2023 was considered a really big year for updating and changing of a lot of privacy laws. And California, Colorado, Connecticut were like some of the bigger states that had it. And that seems to be continuing into 2024. How do you keep up with all the changes that occur?
[00:12:00] Donata: Sure. So it kind of comes from a lot of different sources. This is my favorite question because it’s literally my job.
I use the software, LexusNexis, statenet, that basically you can set essentially what term you would like, like Google Alerts, right. So you’ll say privacy policy or privacy or personal information, and then it will tell you all the bills that have been proposed that have all of those terms, and it will also allow you to track those bills throughout time as well. So, like when you get a list of bills that have those terms you can click track, and then you’ll track them through the entire legislative cycle. Another source is the International Association of Privacy Professionals, which posts news and has a tracker as well that they provide. And then also the American Bar Association provides tracking and news as well. And then you can also subscribe to alerts from different governments, like let’s say the German Data Protection Authority. You can subscribe to alerts or the Canada Information Commissioner’s office, right? You can subscribe to alerts there. So you kind of collate all of that together. And we collate that into our state privacy bill tracker, which you can find on our website, on our blog. And then we also have a global privacy bill tracker as well. And then once bills actually pass, you do have some time between the passage date and the enforcement date to update policies or whatever else you need to update.
[00:13:35] Michelle: It’s really cool. It’s really cool for somebody who’s really into it, which I’m glad, I am so grateful that there are people in the world like you, Donata, who are so into this that I can be like, how do I sign up for you to do this for me? Which is what Termageddon is all about. And we’re going to get to that in a minute. But I think about the fact that there are people with a blog, and that is their one thing, right? I have a blog, I just want to put my thoughts on, and I collect information so I can send people out my blog information.
And then there are ginormous corporations like Amazon and Etsy and eBay and all of the other ones that are out there. What happens if I decide that having policies and terms and conditions on my website is not important to me? What are the potential issues that I might be creating for myself if I’m a blogger or I’m a big corporation?
[00:14:24] Hans: Yeah. So I think it’s important. One of the key things to understand about privacy laws is that privacy laws protect people. So California’s two privacy laws are designed to protect Californians. California, just like any other legislation with regard to privacy laws, they don’t care where your business is located, where your website is operating from. What they care about is protecting their people’s data. So whether you’re a blog owner or a giant corporation, what you need to go through is understanding whose personal data you’re collecting and then seeing what protections do those individuals have and do those laws apply to me. So whether you’re a big business or a small website owner, maybe haven’t even formed a business yet officially, you need to find out what laws apply to you because CCPA, California’s first privacy law, applies to any website that collects as little as an email address. I’m right on that right? It’s not for profit. Yes, any website that collects as little as an email address. Whereas CPRA, California’s second privacy law, only tends to apply with businesses that cross over certain thresholds, like processing a ton of data of California or taking a lot of annual revenue into their business. I can get into specifics if you’d like, but long story short is you need to find out which laws apply to you, because that will dictate your business practices and what needs to be disclosed in your policies. The penalties for not complying with these laws can vary drastically, but in the US, the minimum fine is $2,500 per website visitor whose rights have been infringed upon. So if, like, 100 people from California come to your site and you’re not complying with that law, $2,500 times 100. I mean, these are crushing numbers, in my opinion. Also, it’s one of the fines under GDPR, for example, is 10% of revenue. Meaning if you’re a big business, 10% of your revenue could be devastating to your operations.
If you’re thinking, oh, well, I don’t need policies, I’m a small fish. I guess I have two thoughts, which is, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s at least a couple of privacy laws that do apply to you, that do require you by law to make those disclosures. But then, number two, it’s like, what do you want as an individual? Do you want everyone else having the same mindset as you? Be like, I don’t care about your data, or, I don’t care about having policies, who are we helping there? I really struggle to think we’re helping anyone. We kind of just have to suck it up and realize we’re getting regulated in this industry. You can either embrace it or you can pretend it doesn’t exist until something happens.
[00:17:00] Donata: I think I’d like to add one more thing here. So, yes, obviously, fines. There are bills that are proposed that would allow consumers to sue, which could be a really big deal. But I think it’s also important to note that there’s been a lot of studies that have come out recently about consumer attitudes towards privacy. And compared to, like, ten years ago, consumers care about their privacy way more than before. And also they’re willing to make their purchasing decisions based on that. So if they go to a website and they don’t feel like their privacy will be respected, because let’s say you don’t have policies or you don’t have cookie consent, or you say that you’re going to sell their data. They’re actually going to different vendors who they feel are respecting their privacy more. So privacy can actually be a competitive advantage as well.
[00:17:49] Hans: Prior to this recording starting, we were kind of talking about our pets and everything like that. And it just reminds me of the fact that one time we inquired for some dog training for our husky and we reached out to this group on this website and we submitted our data and before we knew, we were just bombarded with text messages and email marketing. And granted, I guess we did consent, but we had no ability…
[00:18:15] Donata: Actually, I did not.
And also what’s interesting is that. So I submitted some very specific questions, right? Like these are the kinds of dogs I have. This is what I’m looking for. These are your plans. Like how did these plans fit what I need? And I received like five automated marketing emails without receiving a single answer to my question. And I received text messages which I also didn’t consent to or anything like that. And to me, a privacy lawyer, I’m probably more sensitive to this stuff than other people, but I think other people would agree with me. I’m not going with that vendor. Right. I’m not talking to this company because they haven’t answered any of my questions.
Yeah, they just marketed to me.
[00:19:00] Hans: And there lies the goal of none of us want that type of treatment. We don’t like spam calls. Show me one person who enjoys spam calls. Except those YouTubers who target the spammers, which are different.
[00:19:13] Michelle: Those are fun.
[00:19:16] Hans: Yeah, no one likes this stuff. So I mean, it’s important just that we step up as website owners and just work towards respecting privacy rights. I would say, can I do a…
[00:19:25] Jon: Follow up here if I can, real quick? I’m a business owner. I know this is a thing, but I don’t really care about it. I don’t really want to get into it. Like, this seems like a lot of work.
If I contact Termageddon, how do you help me when I don’t really want to deal with that kind of like, can I do a set it and forget it kind of thing?
[00:19:48] Hans: Yeah, that’s certainly the approach we strive for. Termageddon. Before I share all this, though, I will note nothing beats hiring an attorney to draft your policies, monitor laws on your behalf. Like, nothing beats that. And that’s one big con to Termageddon is that we’re not a legal service provider, rather, we’re a technology. So I do want to note that. But if you decided, you know what, it doesn’t make financial sense for me to get an attorney or whatever the case is. If you are considering our tool, it’s $119 a year, and our questionnaire will help determine the laws that apply. And then our questionnaires adapt and ask the questions necessary to make the required disclosures, to help comply with laws, and to help limit your liability as a website owner. So it kind of depends on how big your business is. So if you want, like a worldwide presence, it’s going to take like 45 minutes to 55 minutes to get fully set up. Whereas if you’re more of a local business, only servicing people in your state or territory or region, you may find yourself getting fully set up in 20 minutes. But yeah, we do strive to have as efficient of a set up as possible without sacrificing comprehensiveness. And then once you’ve embedded our codes into your policy pages, you’ve basically given us the opportunity to be able to push updates, notify you, of course, before that. And then every now and then a state or two, like California, you got to love them. Will make last minute amendments that require us to ask new questions. When that does come, we just send you an action alert email.
[00:21:10] Michelle: That’s really cool, actually. I love how I have Termageddon on a bunch of my own personal sites, as you know, Hans, because you’ve helped me figure out what I needed before in the past, which I think is awesome.
I love that for under $150 a year, like significantly under $150 a year, I can be protected and that it only took me 30 to 45 minutes of my time. And then I don’t have to really think about it anymore and I feel protected.
And I do get the emails from you all, and I do see those things and I know when updates have happened and whatever. And so I feel in the loop. It isn’t, like I said, here, do this for me. And now I have no idea what’s happening. So I do appreciate all of the work and the hard work and paying attention, especially that Donata does.
[00:21:56] Hans: I was just going to say she should be the one saying thank you, but that’s…
[00:22:01] Michelle: But I do love that you know what you’re talking about, too, Hans. So it isn’t like, “I don’t know, let me ask my wife.”
[00:22:09] Hans: For the first six months it was that. But yeah, no, I’ve been trained pretty well.
[00:22:14] Michelle: You know, your stuff, which is pretty awesome.
Yeah. So when I think about privacy protection, and I said a little bit at the beginning, it’s definitely about making sure that you are protecting the people who visit your websites, whose data they’ve trusted you with, whether they’ve given you permission to add it to Constant Contact or ActiveCampaign, those kinds of things. And that we are good stewards of the privacy and the data that people hand to us, basically. But there also is that aspect of understanding your own privacy and knowing what you know, like Donata said, I never consented to that because it wasn’t on the form. I signed up for some information yesterday and I was like, I did not check the box that said, add me to your newsletter because I don’t want your newsletter. I just want you to give me the information I’m asking you a question about. Right. And giving people those options of opting into those things. I think if they had been on that dog training form, Donata would have been, nope, nope. Just send me the information I asked you for. But she didn’t even get that opportunity because they’re like, you asked for information. We’re opting you into all of these things about your permission. So as somebody who is visiting sites and with Data Protection Day coming up.
Is it Data Protection Day? I forgot. Protection Awareness Day. What’s it called?
[00:23:10] Hans: Privacy Day.
[00:23:11] Michelle: Thank you. What, as a consumer, we’ll tack this on a little bit to the end of the conversation. What, as a consumer, should I be looking for when I’m visiting sites like this so that I feel protected where I’ve gone and I’m asking for information?
[00:23:46] Donata: Sure. So my first suggestion, everyone’s going to hate, but trust me, stay with me here.
The first suggestion would be to look for a privacy policy and read it. I know nobody wants to read privacy policies, but if you can just look out for a couple of things. So, like, one, what data is being collected? Two, what is being done with that data, who it’s being shared with and whether or not it’s being sold. That will give you a lot of understanding about what your privacy is going to look like when you submit your information to this website. If they don’t have a privacy policy, probably a red flag because they haven’t given you any information to take a look. If they have a cookie consent banner of what you’re consenting to. So maybe you don’t want to be tracked for analytics, or maybe you don’t want to be tracked for advertising. Make sure to unselect those if they have been preselected, which is wrong, but unselect them if they’ve been preselected. Or make sure you just select the items that you’re comfortable with or click reject or decline if you want to do that. And then also kind of pay attention to what you’re agreeing to in the forms. So some forms will have “sign me up for news and alerts” or “sign me up for sales” or whatever.
Make sure that you’re making the right selections. And then if a company does not respect those selections, you can unsubscribe or you can report it as spam or something like that. Same thing on your phone, like if you submitted your phone number but you never agreed to getting text messages. On a lot of phones now, like the iPhone, you can now report it as junk, in which case it’ll go to a special list.
So make sure you understand all of those things and make selections to what is appropriate for you as well as if you use certain sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Data Privacy Day is a great day to look into your privacy settings. There, there are multiple websites that kind of talk about exactly how to access those settings. So you can go in and make the correct settings that you want. Like I don’t want to be tracked for ads or I don’t want to receive email marketing.
[00:25:57] Michelle: So when you did get all of those text messages and emails, what was your response to that company? Did you just type stop on the text messages? Did you unsubscribe? Did you report it?
You don’t have to tell me what you did in particular there. But if you are somebody who is being inundated with this kind of stuff that you didn’t consent to, what is your next option? What’s your best option so you can…
[00:26:21] Donata: Contact the company and let them know, which is what I did. I said, hey, just so you know, I received all these emails and all these text messages that I never signed up for and this is why I’m not going to go with your company.
You can also mark them as spam or report them to Google. You can also contact the Federal Trade Commission. If you’re in the United States, there’s a special list called “do not call.” You can put your number on that list and theoretically will prevent some spammers from calling you. A lot of spammers don’t check that list, even though they’re supposed to.
If you are in other countries like the UK, the EU, Canada, Australia, you have significantly more rights than what we have in the US. So if you’re in any of those countries, you can actually file a report with your data protection agency and they will investigate that report of non compliance. So in the US, it’s a lot harder to get anybody to look at any of this stuff because we don’t have federal privacy law, we just have state specific laws. But in other countries, there’s more action being taken on those types of complaints.
[00:27:26] Hans: And if I so may, if I could just give one takeaway.
Your name is your name. Your email is your email. Your phone number is your phone number. And humans are greater than businesses.
Remember that. This is your property.
This is your data. Companies should respond to you whenever you ask them to change information about yourself or remove information about yourself. Your name, your email, that is your property. And just remember that as we continue barreling through this new era of digital life, I think having this as a pillar is going to be extremely important as the years progress.
[00:28:06] Michelle: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
What are you doing to celebrate data privacy day?
[00:28:13] Donata: I am personally unsubscribing from emails for what I hope to be, but most definitely isn’t, the last time.
I feel like anytime I buy something online, I get all of these emails and then I unsubscribe and then I go buy something from the same place because I like it. And then I get more emails. So now my inbox is just like constantly being inundated. So I’m going to unsubscribe from all the emails that I don’t need for data privacy day. That’s my plan.
[00:28:44] Hans: I think for marketers, they hear things like that and they’re like, oh, gosh, I’m going to not be emailing anyone.
And I’ve been there, I know what that feels like. But there is a strong counter thought to it, which is that the people who are subscribed want to actually hear from you rather than trying to annoy the masses, just add quality to the minor group of people that do want to hear from you. Add value to them. And from there, if that’s your focus, they’re going to talk about you with others who will then subscribe to you.
Speak to your audience. Don’t try to annoy the masses just to get like one extra.
[00:29:27] Donata: That’s so true because these emails that I did not subscribe to, I just delete them. I never click into the email or look at what it is. I just delete them because I don’t want them. Yeah, as a business, we’re celebrating data privacy day by doing a couple of different campaigns as well. So we’re going to be posting about how people can protect their privacy online, including how to access your privacy settings on different apps. And we’re also releasing a special episode of our podcast Privacy Laws that will talk about data privacy. Data more, too.
[00:30:05] Michelle: Excellent.
Now, Jon, you work with our data for StellarWP with everybody’s in ActiveCampaign, as we talked about, you do something, I know where you go through and you clean up the data sometimes. So people have it, because the other part of that is you pay for that, right? So you’re paying to use all of that information that people are getting irritated that you’re using. So you may as well, it would behoove you to take that out of there anyway. So, Jon, you pay attention to that very closely.
[00:30:39] Jon: And I have to absolutely agree with Hans, there seems to be this big thing over a course of time where we began to just be so inundated with, we need the quantity. The quantity is what matters. And the more we have and the more people, and ultimately you start to realize that that quantity can hurt you really bad if you don’t actually get people to actually respond. And this goes with so many things where the engagement is so much more important than the quantity, the actual back and forth, the actual creating of a community or a list or something along those lines. Because at the end of the day, if you have 100,000 people, but only 1000 of them respond, do you really have 100,000? You don’t, you just have 100,000 names. So I absolutely agree with that. And I understand that if people end up not interacting with your system, you should probably take them out and try and re-engage later on. Maybe they’ll come back, but there’s no point in holding on to it. But not everybody thinks that way as well. So I understand.
[00:31:41] Hans: That’s awesome that you think, I mean, huge credit to StellarWP and you for having that type of mindset, because I agree. And I think it’s going to get phased out as the years go by. It’s like really, at the end of the goal, businesses want profit. And really, at the end of the day, people don’t want to be spammed with emails. They want quality. So let’s hit two birds with one stone here and save some money from ActiveCampaign bills for sure. But also let’s engage with the people who want to be engaged with.
[00:32:10] Donata: It’s so true. It makes me think of this podcast that I listened to the other day about influencers like Instagram or Facebook or whatever. Influencers and I guess there was some influencer who had like 5 million followers and then she was trying to sell t-shirts and then she was very upset that only 25 people bought her t-shirts even though she had 5 million followers. And it’s like, well, how engaged is your audience? If those are the numbers that you’re getting, you’re not really influencing as much as you think you are.
[00:32:41] Michelle: That’s true. Very true.
[00:32:43] Hans: This is our cat, Dora, by the way. She’s made a couple of guest appearances.
[00:32:52] Michelle: She just wants the mic. That’s all there is to it. She’s like, let me at it.
She found a warm keyboard. She’s happy.
So is there anything else that we haven’t asked you that you think would be important to share with our audience?
[00:33:06] Donata: Well, I think it’s important to share for Data Privacy Day, for businesses to take a look at their privacy practices too, and make sure that they are respecting people’s privacy. Like you guys said, you take people out of your email list if there’s lower engagement. But I think it’s also important to note that when you keep all this data, you’re more likely to be a victim to a data breach. You’re a much more attractive target because you have so much data, and then the cost of that data breach will be much higher as well. So make sure you’re not collecting data that you don’t need in the first place. And then also cleaning that data through certain periods of time. Don’t just keep it forever. And also, for businesses, this is a great time to make sure that you figure out what laws actually apply to you. Look at when you last updated your privacy policy. Make sure that that’s okay. And then also making sure that your cookie consent banner is compliant. So if you need to have a cookie consent banner, it should have both an accept and a decline option. So if your cookie consent banner is just okay or just accept, or by continuing to use this website, we assume that you’re okay with our use of cookies. That phrase is burned into my mind. I’ve seen it so many times. Make sure that you change into a cookie consent provider that has both options.
And I think that’s my advice.
[00:34:30] Hans: I would just say once a year, everyone hates doing it. But consider resetting passwords. That’s always good as well, both businesses and consumers.
[00:34:42] Michelle: Last year, I don’t know who it was. I was never able to figure it out. But somebody started using my email address to sign me up for everything.
And so it has been almost a year of unsubscribing from everything, logging into things I got signed up for, changing passwords, logging back out so that this person was no longer ordering things in my name. Luckily, they didn’t have access to my debit card or anything like that. But suddenly I had a shopping cart at Wayfair that was $20,000 and sitting in a shopping cart. And so I was getting a ton of emails. So that was a nightmare that I had no way to control.
So do your best out there to make sure. I changed my password frequently. They couldn’t access my email. They could literally just sign me up for everything under the sun. And it’s been quite a nightmare to get out of that.
But because I do take my own privacy seriously, they can’t get into my Twitter, they can’t get into my email, things like that. But if you are somebody that doesn’t take your password seriously, that could have been a bigger nightmare than it was. So I 100% echo that statement and get out there and watch out for yourself for sure.
[00:35:56] Donata: Man, that’s evil.
[00:35:57] Michelle: Yeah, we’ll talk later about all of that.
Anyway, if anybody’s interested in learning more about Termageddon, how do they follow you on socials? How do they find you online? And if you want to give any of your personal accounts, if they have questions, you’re welcome to do that also.
[00:36:16] Hans: Yeah, so our Termageddon handle is “Termageddon” for everything. So Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, you can also go to termageddon.com and just scroll down to see our social links. I know following people talking about privacy sounds like the most exciting thing in the world, but actually kind of is. It is really interesting, this industry. Me personally, I’m on Twitter pretty often or X or whatever it’s called these days. My handle is deep space Hans.
[00:36:44] Donata: Mine is Donata Skillrud.
[00:36:46] Michelle: There you go. Perfect.
Well, thank you all so much for being here today and sharing with us. We also have an article coming out on the StellarWP blog within the month that you’ve penned for us about having good policies and terms and conditions on your website. I’m getting that blog post ready to publish within about a month, so we appreciate all of the contributions that you’ve made and certainly look forward to seeing you at future events. And Jon, thank you so much for co-hosting with me today. It’s been great to do this with you and you have unique insight into what we do here with data which made it perfect for you to be here today, too. So thank you all. So much for being here.
[00:37:28] Hans: Thank you both.
[00:37:29] Donata: Thank you.
[00:37:30] Jon: Thank you.
[00:37:30] Michelle: Absolutely. And we’ll see everybody else on the next episode of WP Constellations. If you find this episode. If you’re listening to this someplace, just go to wpconstellations.com/podcast. Find this episode. We will have all of the links for Hans, Donata, and Jon as well in that episode, as well as have a full transcript of today’s episode. So thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see you next time on WP Constellations.
WP Constellations is a production of StellarWP, home of The Events Calendar, LearnDash, GiveWP, Kadence, Iconic, SolidWP, Orderable, and Restrict Content Pro. Learn more about the StellarVerse at StellarWP.com.
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