What Solopreneurs Need to Know About Privacy

Solopreneurs aren’t often sitting on a wealth of customer data. Their software configurations may be in nascent stages, requiring owners to rely on their own systems rather than a centralized data repository. It’s likely that they won’t be collecting much customer data to begin with, as they won’t have the technical capacity to synthesize insights from this information just yet. Plus, solopreneurs won’t pay much attention to data when they’re in go-go-go mode simply trying to keep the lights on.

Still, data privacy endures in conversation because the dangers of misusing data can have prolonged effects. Companies of all sizes can imperil the privacy of data, even inadvertently, and it will only take one incident to destroy a company’s reputation among its customers, potential or current. Even solopreneurs who don’t consider how they approach data privacy will be set back among the competition and leave themselves open to criticism in this rapidly evolving tech landscape.

Here’s more about what solopreneurs need to know about data privacy and what they can do to mitigate disasters before they occur:

Where Data Privacy Issues Hide

The thought of a data privacy breach might conjure images of a team of infiltrators hacking into a sizable database or breaking into a secure building housing a large bank of hard drives—certainly not targeting the sorts of companies that might be solopreneurships.

However, reality is far more banal. Solopreneurs are collecting data and remaining prone to breaches even if they have no idea.

The most obvious example can be found within software they may already be running. Everything from Microsoft Word to iTunes now collects user data while claiming that this information will be kept in-house and used to better their products and services. The practice sounds innocent, but so little is known about the internal workings of these organizations that it’s impossible for a user to know, with certainty, just which pieces of data were collected and how they were utilized.

Once customer information has been entered, it becomes available to be collected unless folks opt out. Often, a prompt will appear upon first opening the software asking for permission to collect and use data, but not always, and users have proven that they don’t take the time to complete this step later. It becomes an exercise in vigilance for solopreneurs to double check every piece of software they run, as even updates could trigger data sharing.

It’s also worth solopreneurs considering the internet search engines they favor. Typing a customer’s name into Google stores the information within Google AI’s LLM (large language model), where it can inadvertently be reused or folded into LLM training. In fact, AI results will always appear within normal search results unless users append “-a” to their search queries—not something most people will remember to do every time.

If solopreneurs interface with technology at all, there is danger in leaking proprietary customer data for purposes beyond the scope of the small business.

Vendor Responsibilities

Without a robust tech stack at their disposal, solopreneurs will likely need to contract with outside vendors for software, data storage, analytics, and administrative tasks.

This practice remains common but passes the onus of data protection onto the vendors themselves. These are companies that customers of solopreneurships likely hadn’t weighed in on—not that they necessarily should; this can be a time-consuming process. Regardless, the failure of a vendor is going to reflect negatively on the solopreneurship itself.

What’s worse, outside tech vendors are likely to be larger organizations that utilize AI, already ripe for data privacy breaches unless the latest and most comprehensive security measures have been implemented. These are the sorts of companies that receive massive PR, including when issues arise. Customers of solopreneurships will certainly learn quickly when their data has been leaked even if the solopreneurship doesn’t communicate this fact outright.

This liability requires that solopreneurs take extra time evaluating their technology partners from a data privacy perspective. At the bare minimum, these vendors must have published privacy stances on their websites that unambiguously spell out how customer data is being used and for how long it will be stored.

It may be worth it for solopreneurs to share these privacy stances with their customers, as well, to emphasize that they have put care into choosing their partners and to head off any customer questions before they arise. Otherwise, were an issue to arise, it might register as a shock and make customers feel blindsided, which surely will reflect negatively on the solopreneurs themselves.

What Can Be Done?

While solopreneurs may not think their customer data is in peril—if they collect any at all, that is—it’s still worth considering how potential data will be used and kept secure. It may not feel like it now, but it’s well worth the effort sooner rather than later.

First, solopreneurs need to consider how workflows may look if more employees were to come aboard. This is a worthy exercise even for solopreneurs who plan to maintain a one-person operation for their company’s entire lifespan, as there’s no telling when they may require temporary help or need to communicate workflows to outside vendors.

Next, at each step, owners can identify which, if any, software they might use and how that technology would interact with AI. At those points, it’s worth considering how sensitive information could be shared in less identifying ways. Perhaps the data could be anonymized, or fed into one particular program but not another. This sort of thinking can save countless headaches down the road if a data breach were to occur.

The above step assumes a conglomeration of apps that all originated from different vendors, but that’s not always the case. To effectively use AI while keeping data secure, solopreneurs should look for software vendors who offer apps that are deeply integrated with one another. This way, information can be shared between apps securely and updates, often addressing vulnerabilities, can be pushed across the entire system instantly. Each hand-off between third-party apps becomes a liability, so by minimizing these, solopreneurs will be in a better position to promise data privacy.

In the past, it may have been a futile exercise for solopreneurs to consider purchasing software licenses, previously relegated to larger companies with more sizable budgets. But times have changed, and even the most robust software is far more affordable to smaller businesses than ever before. Many of these lower priced options even come with embedded AI that runs on the vendor’s own LLM, which can be tailored towards privacy far more efficiently than, say, Amazon Web Services.

Moving Forward

It’s safe to say that solopreneurs decided to launch a company so they could make a difference, not become bogged down by customer complaints and data privacy issues. By thinking about data privacy from the early days of a business, solopreneurs can ensure that their time will be spent growing their company rather than mitigating its closure.

The exercise of considering data privacy can have benefits even beyond preventing data breaches. Technology is changing rapidly, and solopreneurs may find themselves out of the loop, either because their heads are down working or they haven’t yet established a network of other business owners from whom they can learn about software.

Exercising some mindfulness around data privacy today, whether it’s considering where they may be sharing data unnecessarily with AI or how their typical software use can contribute, will position solopreneurs to conquer whatever comes along tomorrow.

This article, "What Solopreneurs Need to Know About Privacy" was first published on Small Business Trends

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