It is very tempting as a sales and marketing professional to request that your IT resources provide pre-checked consent boxes on sales, marketing, and transaction pages on the Company website. Pre-checked boxes can include a box that is already populated with “Yes! Sign me up for all of the newsletters and offers!” or “Yes! Sign me up to receive news and deals from our partners!” And so on. However, the European Union recently ruled that pre-checked boxes are not evidence of valid consent. A visitor or customer to your website needs to actively check the boxes provided to agree to the terms of use, agree to the terms of your privacy policy, and agree to sign up for marketing related emails. I’m sure we are all guilty of cruising past all of those boxes to finalize a purchase or get to whatever it is at the bottom of the page that we were interested in reading. Because websites are viewable and include interaction from around the world, companies need to be aware of these types of developments and implement policies and procedures to comply with laws that govern the company as well as the company’s consumers. Not sure what to do next? We are here to help!
NOTE: This general summary of the law should not be used to solve individual problems since slight changes in the fact situation may require a material variance in the applicable legal advice.