What to Leave in 2025: Bad Privacy Advice Your Business Should Retire

New year, fresh start. And yet, somehow the same terrible privacy advice keeps showing up in boardrooms, Slack channels, and “a guy we know in IT” conversations.

Let’s gently (but firmly) toss these classics into the 2025 trash pile.

“We’re too small for anyone to care about our data.”

Yes. Hackers are famously known for respecting small businesses and skipping over easy targets out of pure kindness.

Reality check: smaller companies are easier, not safer. Less security, fewer controls, more chaos. Delicious.

“Our IT provider handles privacy.”

Love this one. Truly.

IT handles systems. Privacy handles people, data, laws, vendors, notices, training, risk, and accountability.

Assuming IT “has privacy” is like assuming your electrician also practices medicine.

“We don’t collect that much data.”

If you have:

• A website

• Employees

• Clients

• Email

• A scheduling tool

Congratulations. You collect data. Probably more than you think. And no, not knowing where it lives is not a defense.

“Our privacy policy is fine. We copied it years ago.”

Ah yes. The vintage privacy policy. A true collector’s item.

Unfortunately, regulators don’t accept “we forgot about it” as a legal strategy. Privacy policies should evolve, unlike that Word doc from 2018.

“We’ll fix privacy if something happens.”

Bold strategy. Unfortunately, privacy laws are not written in the future tense. Neither are breach notifications, fines, or lawsuits.

Fixing privacy after an incident is like installing a smoke detector after the fire department leaves.

“Nobody actually enforces this stuff.”

They do. Quietly. Consistently. And usually at the worst possible time for you.

Also, enforcement is only part of the fun. Reputational damage is the gift that keeps on giving.

What to Do Instead

You don’t need perfection. You need:

• Visibility into your data

• Clear ownership

• Reasonable safeguards

• Policies that match reality

• And someone who actually knows what they’re doing

✨ New Year Energy, But Make It Smart ✨

Leaving bad privacy advice in 2025 doesn’t make you dramatic. It makes you prepared, credible, and harder to mess with.

And honestly? That’s the vibe.