[PHOENIX REVIEWING] What Do I Review First?

Phoenix
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1

Reviewing Order For Services

Version 1.0 [Last Update: 11/30/2020]
Archived on GitHub

This is personal opinion that merely serves as pragmatic advice.
This is not legal advice, nor an enforcement!

Priority List

When reviewing a Service, always review the Documents in the following order:

Tier List

1. Terms of Service
2. Privacy Policy
3. Cookie Policy
4. Community Guidelines
5. Copyright Notice
6. GDPR/CCPA
   .
   .
   .

Explanation

When reviewing Services, sometimes we get conflicting stuff arising between Documents. This happens (most of the time) because specific Notices talk about specific stuff, which may need different wordings for the same thing.

The purpose of the two main Agreements (ToS and PrivPol) are clear:

  • ToS: Protects the Service.
  • Privacy Policy: Protects (well, in practice, only informs) the User of the Service’s products.

[1], [2]

If other Documents exist for the Service you’re reviewing, I’d recommend you took these as subsets/extensions of either of the two main ones.

For example:

  • For ToS:

    • Copyright Notice
    • Disclaimers
    • Accesibility Notice
    • …

  • For PrivPol

    • GDPR/CCPA Compliance (AKA Do Not Sell My Data)
    • Cookie Policy
    • …

That being said, the reason why it is important to get the ToS straight before anything else is due to Law compliance.

Understanding what you can and cannot sue a company for will make you understand how truthful they may or may not be/why they are (not) so vague/dismissive on the rest of the documents! (Among other stuff)

The ToS are, in general and in practice, the baseline for all legal proceedings, including Data Processing.

Of course this is up to debate, and I would like your opinions on this, as I’m not a legal expert.
I will be looking forward to your answers!

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