Even though WordPress makes its Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions agreement available for public use, there are a number of reasons why you shouldn't just copy and paste these agreements as your own.
Learn more at the related blog post found here: https://termsfeed.com/blog/no-privacy-terms-wordpress/
2. WordPress provides its Terms of Service agreement and Privacy
Policy under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license.
This means you can copy these agreements for your own business.
3. This might sound like a great thing.
However, copying these agreements may create
issues for your business.
4. Should you copy these agreements?
First, consider these points:
5. The ShareAlike license comes with 2 requirements:
You must attribute your agreement to WordPress
You must make the agreement and any customizations
available under the same license
6. Another thing to consider is that WordPress agreements
are created for WordPress.
Your business model and privacy practices may differ greatly,
making the agreements not suitable for your needs.
7. Remember:
A Privacy Policy is required by law if you collect or use personal
information.
Many third party web services (such as Google Analytics) require
one if you use their services.
A Terms of Service agreement (also known as a Terms and
Conditions/Terms of Use) is not required by law.
It’s optional, but it’s very smart to have.
9. What personal information you collect, and how
What you use it for
How your users can contact you regarding their information
and usage of it
Privacy Policies are required by law, and thus come with legal
requirements of what they must contain:
10. WordPress may collect far more or far less personal information
than you do, and may do it in very different ways.
Copying the Privacy Policy will likely mean that your Policy is
inaccurate, thus not legal.
11. You can use the WordPress Privacy Policy as a starting point
for what clauses your own Policy needs to have.
However, you should not copy the specific content of each clause.
13. Many clauses in Terms of Service agreements tend to be
fairly standard.
For example, chances are you’ve seen Disclaimer of Warranties
and Limitation of Liability clauses that look very similar to this one:
14.
15. However, other clauses in a Terms of Use agreement will differ
drastically depending on your own business.
For example, this clause covers gift cards. Your business may
not offer gift cards, or may have different stipulations for them.
16.
17. Copying some of the standard clauses from the WordPress
Terms of Service may be ok to do.
18. However, copying the entire agreement may leave you with:
Unnecessary clauses
Missing clauses
19. Even though WordPress makes its legal agreements available for
others to use, they should not be used as copied word-for-word
agreements because:
Your business and WordPress likely operate very differently
You need business-specific information in your Terms of
Service
Your Privacy Policy needs to be accurate and informative of
your practices
20. Use a reputable legal agreement generator to create your
own custom Terms of Service and Privacy Policy instead of
copying them from WordPress or any other business.