Resources
Guides and resources about terms of service analysis, consumer protection, and privacy policy grading.
Limitation of Liability Clauses Explained for Users
When something goes wrong with a service or product you've paid for, you might naturally expect the company to take responsibility and compensate you for your losses. But buried in the terms of service, often in small print, is a clause that can severely limit or eliminate that responsibility. This is the limitation of liability clause, and it can mean the difference between recovering your losses and being left with nothing.
GDPR and Terms of Service: Checklist for EU Users
If you live or work in the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives you effective privacy rights, but only if you know what to look for in a service's terms and privacy policy. Most EU users skip the fine print, assuming the law protects them automatically. The reality is more nuanced: GDPR sets a floor, but companies can, and often do, ask for consent to practices that push those boundaries. This checklist walks you through the key clauses every EU user should audit before signing up, paying, or handing over personal data.
DPA review checklist for marketplaces teams
If you run a marketplace, or even just buy SaaS tools through one, every vendor relationship that touches personal data needs a Data Processing Agreement (DPA). The problem is that most DPAs are 15-page PDFs stuffed with legalese, and marketplace teams rarely have in-house counsel sitting next to them during procurement. This checklist turns the review into a repeatable, step-by-step process you can finish in under an hour.
Cookie policy review checklist for mobile apps teams
Mobile apps collect data the moment a user taps "Install," yet most teams treat cookie and tracking policies as an afterthought, something legal drafts the night before launch. The result is vague language, missing disclosures, and real regulatory risk. This checklist gives product managers, developers, and QA leads a repeatable, step-by-step process for reviewing cookie policies before every release so nothing slips through the cracks.
Cookie policy review checklist for e-commerce stores teams
If you run an e-commerce store, or work on the team behind one, your cookie policy is more than a legal checkbox. It shapes customer trust, determines whether you comply with privacy regulations, and directly affects how tracking, analytics, and marketing pixels behave on your site. Yet most store teams copy-paste a template once and never look at it again. This checklist changes that.
Cookie policy review checklist for creator platforms teams
Creator platforms, think Patreon, Gumroad, Teachable, Ko-fi, and dozens of newer alternatives, rely heavily on cookies to track subscriptions, serve personalized content, and run affiliate programs. If you're a creator, a small team managing multiple storefronts, or a privacy-conscious buyer subscribing to creator tools, the cookie policy buried in those platforms' legal pages can directly affect your data, your audience's data, and even your revenue. This checklist gives you a repeatable, step-by-step process to audit any creator platform's cookie policy before you commit.
Cookie policy review checklist for B2B SaaS teams
If your team evaluates B2B SaaS tools, whether you are the one signing the contract or the one approving the vendor, cookie policies deserve the same scrutiny as pricing pages. A poorly written cookie policy can expose your company to regulatory fines, erode customer trust, and create data-handling liabilities that ripple through your entire supply chain. This checklist walks you through every section you should inspect before you click "Accept" on behalf of your organization.
Checklist: spot unilateral ToS changes clauses before you subscribe
You are about to hand over your credit card to a new SaaS tool, streaming service, or marketplace. Somewhere in the terms of service sits a short paragraph that says the company can change the rules whenever it wants, without asking you first. That single clause, often called a "unilateral changes" or "modification" clause, can silently rewrite your privacy rights, raise your price, or strip away features you paid for.
Checklist: spot surveillance advertising clauses before you subscribe
You found a promising new app, your cursor is hovering over the "Start Free Trial" button, and somewhere below it sits a wall of legal text you will never read. Buried inside that wall are surveillance advertising clauses, provisions that let the company track your behavior, build a profile, and sell or share that profile with ad networks. This checklist will teach you exactly what to look for so you can make an informed decision in under five minutes.
Checklist: spot perpetual content licences clauses before you subscribe
You upload a photo to a design tool, paste a blog post into an AI writing assistant, or share a video through a social platform, and somewhere in the terms of service a single sentence quietly grants that company a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to your content. Even after you cancel, your work can be used for advertising, model training, or sublicensing to third parties. These clauses are surprisingly common, and most people never notice them until it is too late.
Checklist: spot hidden fee escalation clauses before you subscribe
You signed up for a SaaS tool at $29 per month. Six months later the invoice reads $39, and you never agreed to a price hike, or so you thought. Buried deep in the terms of service was a single sentence granting the vendor the right to raise prices "at any time, with or without notice." Fee escalation clauses like this are shockingly common, and they cost subscribers hundreds of dollars a year in unexpected charges.
Checklist: spot forced arbitration clauses before you subscribe
You are about to enter your credit card number for a shiny new SaaS tool, streaming service, or AI app. Somewhere in the terms of service, buried under thousands of words you will never read, sits a clause that quietly strips away your right to sue the company in court. That clause is called a forced arbitration clause, and it affects far more subscriptions than most people realize. This checklist will teach you exactly what to look for, where to look, and how to protect yourself before you click "I agree."
Checklist: spot data sharing with advertisers clauses before you subscribe
You found a promising SaaS tool, a slick new app, or a subscription box that checks every feature on your wish list. Before you hand over your email and credit card, there is one question worth asking: will this company share your personal data with advertisers? Buried inside most terms of service and privacy policies are clauses that grant the company broad rights to pass your browsing habits, purchase history, and even device identifiers to third-party ad networks. This checklist helps you find those clauses in minutes, no law degree required.
Checklist: spot cross-border data transfers clauses before you subscribe
Every time you sign up for a SaaS tool, a cloud storage service, or an AI-powered app, your personal data may travel across continents before you even finish the onboarding wizard. Cross-border data transfer clauses buried deep inside terms of service determine which countries can access your information, under what legal framework, and with what safeguards. Missing these clauses can expose you to weaker privacy protections, government surveillance programs, or data-handling standards far below what you expect.
Checklist: spot class action waivers clauses before you subscribe
Buried deep inside the terms of service you click "I agree" on, there is often a single paragraph that strips away one of your most effective consumer rights: the ability to join a class action lawsuit. A class action waiver means that if the company overcharges thousands of users by a few dollars each, none of you can band together in court, you must fight alone, usually through private arbitration. This checklist will teach you exactly what to look for, where to look, and what to do once you find these clauses, all before you hand over your credit card.
Checklist: spot children's data collection clauses before you subscribe
You found a great new app for your kid, or maybe a SaaS tool your whole family will use. Before you tap "Subscribe," there is a question most people skip: does this service collect data from children, and what exactly does it do with that data? Children's privacy clauses are buried deep inside terms of service, wrapped in legal language that even attentive adults miss. This checklist gives you a concrete, repeatable process to spot those clauses in minutes, no law degree required.
Checklist: spot broad indemnification clauses before you subscribe
You found the perfect SaaS tool, the pricing looks fair, and the feature list checks every box. But buried deep in the terms of service is a single paragraph that could make you financially responsible for the vendor's own mistakes. That paragraph is the indemnification clause, and if it is written too broadly, you are signing up for far more than a monthly subscription fee. This checklist will help you spot those clauses, understand what they really mean, and decide whether the risk is worth it, all before you click "I agree."
Install Terms Doctor and Run Your First ToS Scan
You just signed up for a shiny new SaaS tool, and somewhere between the "Create Account" button and the dashboard tour you clicked "I agree to the Terms of Service" without reading a single line. You are not alone, most people do the same thing. The good news is that Terms Doctor, a free browser extension, can read those terms for you, run 101 consumer-protection checks in seconds, and hand you a simple A-F grade so you know exactly what you are agreeing to.
Checklist: spot auto-renewal billing clauses before you subscribe
You found the perfect SaaS tool, entered your credit card, and clicked "Start Free Trial." Six months later you discover you have been billed every month since the trial ended, and the cancellation window closed two weeks ago. Auto-renewal clauses are the silent budget killers hiding in terms of service, and most people never read them until the charge appears on their bank statement. This checklist will teach you exactly what to look for so you never get caught off guard again.
Checklist: spot AI training on user data clauses before you subscribe
You found the perfect SaaS tool, the pricing looks right, and the feature list checks every box. But buried somewhere in the terms of service is a clause that grants the company a perpetual, royalty-free license to use your data, including prompts, uploads, and outputs, to train its AI models. If you have ever wondered whether a service quietly feeds your content into a machine-learning pipeline, this checklist is for you.
Export Terms Doctor Reports for Legal Review
You just found a red flag buried in a SaaS vendor's terms of service, forced arbitration, a broad AI-training clause, or an auto-renewal trap that could lock you in for another year. Now you need to share that finding with a lawyer, a compliance team, or even your own future self. The fastest way to do that is to export the Terms Doctor report into a clean, portable file that anyone can open, search, and annotate without installing the extension themselves.
Acceptable use policy template notes for B2B SaaS founders
If you sell software to other businesses, your acceptable use policy (AUP) is the document that tells customers exactly what they can and cannot do with your product. A weak or missing AUP leaves you exposed to abuse, compliance headaches, and awkward conversations with enterprise prospects who expect one. These notes walk you through the clauses that matter most, the mistakes founders keep making, and a ready-to-use checklist so you can draft or audit your own AUP this week.
Acceptable use policy review checklist for AI tools teams
Every AI tool your team adopts comes with an acceptable use policy (AUP) that dictates what you can and cannot do with the service. Ignore it, and you risk account termination, data loss, or even legal liability. This checklist walks you through every clause you should review before rolling out a new AI tool across your organization, so you can move fast without breaking compliance.
Compare Two Versions of a Privacy Policy Side by Side
Privacy policies change all the time, often without any notification to you. A streaming service quietly adds an AI-training clause, a SaaS tool slips in forced arbitration, or a marketplace expands its data-sharing partners from five to fifty. If you are not comparing the old version against the new one, you will never know what rights you just lost. This guide walks you through exactly how to place two versions of a privacy policy side by side, spot the differences that matter, and automate the process so you never miss a critical change again.