SignalWatch 3 min read

How to monitor a terms of service or privacy policy

Legal pages change without an email. Watch the public URL, ignore the chrome, and get a diff when the clauses you rely on move.

A terms of service or privacy policy is a public page that vendors edit when they change the deal. The useful habit is a scheduled check of that URL and an alert with a diff when the text moves — not a hope that marketing will email every customer.

Why subscriptions miss this

Some companies post a "we updated our privacy policy" banner or email. Many do not, or the notice lands in a catch-all inbox. The page itself is the source of truth. If the clause about data retention, subprocessors, or price-change notice moved, you want the diff the same day.

This is the same job as how to get alerted when a web page changes, aimed at legal URLs.

Set up the monitor

SignalWatch fetches a public HTTP(S) URL on a schedule and compares visible text. When it changes, you get a unified diff by email, Slack, Discord, or an HMAC-signed JSON webhook. Free: 3 monitors every 15 minutes, 45 days of history, no card. You can check a URL before you create an account.

  1. Pick the canonical public URL — usually /privacy, /privacy-policy, /terms, or /legal/terms. Open it logged out.
  2. One monitor per document. Terms and privacy are separate URLs even when they live under /legal.
  3. Add a CSS selector pointing at the article or main policy body (main, article, or the content wrapper). Cookie banners, "last updated" widgets in the header, and chat bubbles cause noise.
  4. Ignore regex for anything that always moves (a printed "current as of" clock outside the body you already selected).
  5. Send alerts to a channel your ops or legal-minded owner actually reads — Slack or Discord beats a personal inbox for a team.

What to do when the alert fires

  1. Read the diff. SignalWatch shows what changed; you decide if it matters.
  2. If the change touches billing, data use, or liability, escalate to whoever owns the vendor relationship.
  3. Keep the history. Free plans retain 45 days; that is enough to show "it moved last Tuesday" in a conversation.

This is not legal advice. The monitor tells you the public text changed. What you must do about it depends on your contracts and counsel.

Good targets

  • Payment processors, email APIs, cloud hosts, and analytics tools you depend on.
  • Any SaaS whose DPA or privacy page you pointed at in a customer questionnaire.
  • Your own /privacy and /terms, so an accidental CMS edit is visible — same idea as watching your pricing page in how to monitor a competitor's pricing page.

Poor targets

  • A PDF behind a login, or a policy that only appears after accepting cookies that block the HTML. SignalWatch needs public HTTP(S) text.
  • An entire legal centre with dozens of country variants on day one. Start with the three vendors that would hurt most if the deal changed overnight.

Checklist

  • Public URL confirmed in a private window.
  • Selector on the policy body; chrome ignored.
  • Alert channel chosen.
  • Free plan used for the first one to three documents; Pro ($12/month or $79/year) when you need more monitors or a 5-minute interval.

Vendor status and changelog pages use the same product with a different selector — how to monitor a vendor's status page or changelog.