By country

Disclaimer Generator USA

No federal privacy statute - a growing patchwork of state laws, plus FTC Section 5 and the wiretapping class-action risk.

Generate your disclaimer Read the disclaimer guide

US disclaimers do real work in three places: FTC endorsement rules for affiliate and sponsored content, professional-advice exposure for health, legal and financial publishing, and the conspicuousness requirements that make warranty disclaimers enforceable.

The United States has no general federal privacy law. What it has instead is a widening set of comprehensive state statutes - California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Florida, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Minnesota and Maryland among them - layered over sectoral rules for health, finance, education and children.

Above all of them sits Section 5 of the FTC Act. The FTC does not need a privacy statute to act: if your policy says one thing and your product does another, that is a deceptive practice, and the resulting consent orders run for twenty years. A US privacy policy is therefore best understood as a promise you will be held to literally.

The most expensive US privacy risk for a small business is not usually a regulator. It is private litigation under old wiretapping statutes - California’s CIPA in particular - repurposed against session replay, chat widgets and advertising pixels. That risk turns on consent and disclosure, which is exactly what the policy and banner control.

What a disclaimer in the United States has to cover

Clear and conspicuous affiliate and sponsorship disclosure placed before the endorsement, per the FTC endorsement guides
No professional relationship language specific to the field you publish in
Warranty disclaimers in conspicuous form, since ordinary body text can be held ineffective
Earnings, health or investment claims disclaimers where the content invites reliance

How the United States actually moves personal data

Advertising pixels and conversion APIs

Meta, Google and TikTok pixels plus server-side conversion APIs move identifiable data to ad platforms. Under most state laws this is "sharing for targeted advertising" and needs an opt-out; under CIPA theories it is the basis of the complaint.

Session replay and chat tooling

Tools that record keystrokes, mouse movement or chat content are the highest-frequency source of US privacy class actions. Disclosure before the recording starts is the defence.

Data broker and enrichment inflows

Buying enrichment data makes you a recipient of third-party personal information, which several state laws require you to disclose - and California’s Delete Act may make you a registered data broker.

Health-adjacent data outside HIPAA

Wellness, fitness and symptom data usually falls outside HIPAA but inside Washington’s My Health My Data Act, which carries a private right of action.

Children and teens

COPPA applies under 13; several state laws add duties for teens, and age-appropriate design codes impose obligations that go well past a checkbox.

Third parties the draft will ask you about

Stripe · Shopify Payments · Google Analytics 4 · Meta Pixel · Klaviyo · HubSpot · Twilio and SendGrid · AWS us-east-1 · Intercom · Segment

The rules that apply

State comprehensive privacy laws

Seventeen-plus states with rights of access, deletion, correction, portability and opt-out of targeted advertising and sale, with thresholds that catch mid-sized businesses.

FTC Act Section 5

Unfair or deceptive acts and practices. Your published statements are enforceable commitments regardless of any privacy statute.

Sectoral statutes

HIPAA for covered entities, GLBA for financial institutions, FERPA for education records, COPPA for under-13s, and the VPPA for video viewing histories.

Wiretapping and pen-register claims

CIPA in California and analogous state statutes drive class actions over session replay, chat transcription and pixel-based tracking.

Global Privacy Control

California, Colorado, Connecticut and others require honouring an opt-out preference signal from the browser, not just a link on the site.

What the generated disclaimer contains

Scope of what is being disclaimed
The specific content, advice or outcome the disclaimer covers, named rather than gestured at.
No professional relationship
A clear statement that publishing information does not create a professional, advisory or fiduciary relationship.
Accuracy and currency
That content is provided as-is, may date, and should be verified before it is relied on.
External links and third-party content
That you do not control or endorse what sits behind an outbound link.
Affiliate and sponsorship disclosure
Paid relationships disclosed up front, which is a legal requirement in its own right in the US, UK and EU.
Limitation of liability
The consequences you are not responsible for, drafted to survive the consumer law of the markets you publish into.

Building a US-facing policy

Work out which state laws you actually meet the threshold for
Most turn on residents processed per year plus revenue, and several drop the threshold where you derive revenue from selling data.
Inventory every tag before you write the disclosure
The list of tags is the list of disclosures. Anything you cannot see, you cannot describe accurately.
Implement opt-out end to end
The link, the preference signal, and the downstream propagation to ad platforms through their limited-data-use or restricted-processing settings.
Reconcile the policy against the product line by line
This is what an FTC investigation does, so do it first.
Set an annual review date and record it
Some state laws require it, and it is the cheapest possible evidence of a compliance programme.

Where this usually goes wrong

Promising more than the product does

A line like "we never share your data with third parties" alongside a live Meta pixel is a Section 5 case with no privacy statute required.

A "Do Not Sell" link that does nothing

Several state attorneys general have opened enforcement on exactly this: a link that renders a form which never reaches the ad platforms.

Ignoring browser opt-out signals

Global Privacy Control has to be honoured where state law requires it. A site with a compliant link and no GPC handling is only half done.

Treating one state law as covering all of them

Thresholds, definitions of sale, cure periods and universal opt-out obligations differ. A Virginia-shaped notice will not satisfy California.

Session replay with no pre-collection notice

Notice after the fact does not help. The consent has to be obtainable before the recording tool loads.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a federal US privacy law?

No general one. There are sectoral laws - HIPAA, GLBA, FERPA, COPPA, the VPPA - and Section 5 of the FTC Act, which reaches any business whose privacy statements are misleading.

Do I need to comply with every state law?

Only the ones whose thresholds you meet, but the practical answer for most growing businesses is to build to the strictest applicable standard - usually California - and treat the rest as variations.

What is the Global Privacy Control?

A browser-level signal that communicates an opt-out of sale and targeted advertising. California, Colorado and Connecticut among others require businesses to honour it as a valid request.

Why are companies being sued over website chat and analytics?

Plaintiffs use decades-old wiretapping and pen-register statutes, especially California’s CIPA, arguing that third-party tools intercept communications without consent. Clear pre-collection disclosure and consent are the practical defence.

Does a disclaimer actually protect me?

It reduces exposure rather than removing it. A clear, prominent, specific disclaimer helps establish that a reader could not reasonably have treated your content as personalised advice; a vague one buried in a footer does very little.

Where should a disclaimer appear?

On its own page, and repeated at the point of risk - above the fold on the article, video description or calculator it applies to. Regulators care about proximity, not existence.

Do I need to disclose affiliate links?

Yes. The FTC endorsement guides, the UK CAP Code and the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive all require a clear, unavoidable disclosure before the link, not in a footer.