5 Reasons Why You Should Use Disclaimers On Your Site
Terms and conditions are placed online for altruistic reasons but also to protect businesses from any legal liabilities when uncertain events happen.
Whether you are procrastinating if you need to put a disclaimer on a website you build or a mobile application you’ve created, understanding the benefits and why they’re done is vital.
We’ve jotted down the best reasons why you need to place a disclaimer on your website. You might be surprised and get it after reading this.
What Is A Disclaimer?
First things first, what are disclaimers and do you ‘really’ need one?
Disclaimers are merely statements intended to reduce or limit any legal obligations or liabilities of the entity or person who placed them in a website, mobile applications, games, etc. The complexity and length of a disclaimer vary on what product, content, services, or functionalities that your website or business offers.
Generally, if your business or service gets complicated, your disclaimer goes longer, more comprehensive, and elaborate. There are some examples of disclaimer texts found on a few reputable sites to help you understand the scope of every T&C’s. It will protect you and your business from the potential risk of unwanted claims or legal issues in some instances that a client or customer misunderstood some aspects of your business.
Various industries are very cautious in providing information to the public as it might be misconstrued and may be used as expert advice like dietitians, doctors, lawyers, and more. While giving advice can only be provided with appropriate disclosures.
- With a disclaimer, it can warn your readers of the contents found on your website for informational intention alone. Those who take actions based on these data are responsible for their risks.
- Disclaimers are the best defence in the digital arsenal which protects you from liability and lawsuits. Every website, piece of software, or business should use a release to protect themselves from legal claims for any potential errors associated with your service, product, or content.
5 Vital Reasons Why You Need A Disclaimer On Your Website
Privacy policies are law requirements if you are collecting personal information from users such as name, email address, physical address, phone numbers, etc. They are a vital part of a website and here’s why:
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Avoid Users Abuse
Terms and conditions inform website, service, or product users of how the collected data is used. It outlines the consequences to users that abuse the site. For instance, disclaimers or terms and conditions can include clauses that outline that using harmful languages, spamming other users, or defamatory contents are not tolerated.
In case you track users that do such acts or abuse the website, these users can face temporary to permanent bans from using the service, product, and even the website.
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Terminate Accounts
Disclaimers enable you to have the right to ban or terminate abusive users or accounts. It is significant for those websites that come with registration columns. Termination clauses are traditionally inserted to disable or restrict accounts that found abusive users based on acounts’s activities.
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Own The Content
Since you’re the website owner, your content, design, website layout, or logo are technically all yours. You don’t want anyone to take all the credit of what you’ve worked for, especially your content that took you long hours curating and working on it. Hence, an intellectual property that is being included ensures that international copyright laws protect your content.
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Set The Governing Law
The Governing Law section of the disclaimer or T&C agreements mentions the jurisdiction where it’s applied to the label present in the accord.
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Liability Limitations
Additional protection of your content from being plagiarized elsewhere is vital, and terms and conditions can also provide warranty disclaimer that limits your legal liabilities should there be an error found on materials presented into your website.
Owners are not held responsible for the data provided is complete, accurate, or suitable for any intent.
Conclusion
Disclaimers may seem like lengthy unnecessary statements placed somewhere in a website before registration or collection of sensitive/personal data. However, they are intended to protect website owners, products, or services offered. While you may regard them as unimportant, you might be surprised at how vital they are for you should there be any claims filed against your site, service, or products.