[tjosten]

How can a website / service be operated in 2015 without any contact or legal information? How am I supposed to use this for my personal information without being able to read the privacy statements or knowing who's operating the service to what purpose?

Edit: To make the reason for my comment clear, there was no link in the footer like there is now at the time I wrote it.

[jwr]

As someone who recently launched a service — among a zillion things you have to do to deploy a software application online this one seems markedly less important, especially if you are launching an MVP on a small budget.

If your MVP won't fly, legal info won't help and is a waste of time and resources. If it will, you can always add it in the future. The percentage of people who will complain or not use the service at all without reading the Terms of Use first is… well, I have no idea what it is, but let's just say it won't move the needle.

Contact information is more important, and easy to add, so it should be there.

[zyxley]

Not to mention some jurisdictions requiring a privacy policy, like California.

[15155]

Believe it or not, the online world doesn't revolve around California or the European Union.

One of the best "features" of the internet is that it is jurisdictionally grey.

Otherwise, why not just subject the entire world to the stringent requirements of China?

[hyperpape]

So, good observation in the abstract, but: 1) you're responding to someone who said "some jurisdictions" 2) siavosh's Twitter profile suggests that they're in San Francisco.

[adambatkin]

While it's true that it may not be a legal requirement (in some jurisdictions) to post a privacy policy, it's probably not a good idea to trust a service without one, particularly if said service is designed for posting potentially private personal information.

In other words: They should post a privacy policy - not because it's a legal requirement (though it may be) - but because it's good business. And no one will trust them otherwise.

[Karunamon]

Serious question: Do people treat privacy policies any different than EULA's? (To wit: Abstruse legalese that doesn't really tell anyone anything?)

I can summarize 95% of privacy policies right here:

    * We won't sell your info (directly)
    * We "may" provide your info to third parties based on ill-defined criterion
    * We can change this at any time without telling you first
    * If we get bought (which is likely), this is all rendered invalid
    * If we break our word here, your recourse is precisely jack

[mirimir]

I trust no privacy policy. Once something is online, it's no longer under my control. So it's either for public use, or it's securely encrypted.

[OldSchoolPro]

I'm sure there a lot of strange requirements in random states of India, China, Russia, Egypt, etc as well.

[yitchelle]

http://www.faqt.co/terms-of-service.html may be enough?

[zyxley]

Nope. Has to be linked from the homepage, among other requirements.

http://leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=...

[danieltillett]

What is the consequences of ignoring this if you are outside of California?

[zyxley]

If any user of the service is in California, then the state can potentially take legal action against you.

Whether this really matters to a particular company depends on where they are, but full-faith-and-credit means that at a minimum anyone based in the US has to worry about it.

[danieltillett]

Has the State of California ever taken legal action against any company located outside of CA for not complying with this regulation or is it just another one of those laws that are on the book but are never enforced?

[tjosten]

The link in the footer has just been added and wasn't there when I wrote my comment.

[siavosh]

Yep, was meaning to add that in, added!