Is your WordPress site legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you are advertising or promoting?
Internet laws and regulations are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not protect someone from taking legal action against your business.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these laws has ramifications for several business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. contextual ads
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook will reject your applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in a range of advertising and online marketing networks.
If your website is not compliant, you could also face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
This article explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and lists simple solutions that will make your WordPress website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations in your country or region.
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be if any of the scenarios below were to occur:
- A person has a heart attack after using your online fitness program.
- The skin cream you promote as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users allergic reactions.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you plan to do with it.
- Someone steals content from your site and puts it up on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website letting your visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are selling that you could derive financial benefits if visitors purchase through your link.
- You did not spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims that your testimonials are fake and decides to sue you because of it.
- You did not disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website publishes adult content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to issue a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking at least three of Google’s policies. Although the website owners could technically be sued by Google, more than likely what could happen, is that they would be issued cautions or lose access to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming exposed to litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
You need to make sure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and information accessible to all site users.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services
Compliance with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site users know that your website complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you interact with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using their products or service. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your websites with Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information-based products via places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale in their network …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policy statements on your website, especially when using product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many resources websites for businesses that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you are planning to develop apps for your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website
If you suspect that your website is lacking in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should help you keep out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and third-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into adding any of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Audio/Video Terms (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets your readers be aware that you’re not receiving any form of compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets visitors know that you may derive some form of financial benefit if they purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets readers know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to site users that you have been compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Compliance Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal folder in your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that users have access to legal information from all your pages …
(It’s important to display links to legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer menu, refer to this tutorial:
Templates
You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
Go here for more information:
Another option is to download a package of legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.
More information:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using legal templates, you can simplify things by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal WordPress plugins that you should check out:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If creating legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:
- Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WP page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When a user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your WP dashboard menu …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)
With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)
Select from a number of pre-configured legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
Legal page templates include:
- Terms of Use (Users are forced to agree to Terms and Conditions before using site)
- Linking Policy
- External Links Policy
- Terms and Conditions
- Refund Policy
- Affiliate Disclosure
- Privacy Policy
- Affiliate Agreement
- Facebook Privacy Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- Antispam Policy
- DoubleClick DART Cookies Policy
- Disclaimer Template
- FTC Disclosure Statement Template
- Medical Disclaimer Template
- Testimonials Disclosure – As per FTC guidelines
- Amazon Affiliate Disclosure Template
- DMCA Policy Template
- California Privacy Rights Policy Template
- Digital Goods Refund Policy Template
- COPPA – Children’s Online Privacy Policy Template
- Blog Comments Policy Template
- Newsletter Subscription Policy and Disclaimer Template
- FTC Disclaimer Widget
To learn more about using this plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
This plugin lets you easily install professionally-written legal pages such as:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Social Media Disclosure
- Medical Disclaimer
- Terms of Service
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro – Professionally-written legal forms)
Additionally:
- Drag & Drop FTC Disclaimer Widget: Add an FTC Disclaimer to any WordPress sidebar or widget area.
- Customizable EU Cookie Compliance Bar: Display an EU cookie compliance bar if you are getting traffic from the EU and your sites use cookies.
With just one-click you can install almost all of the legal pages your site needs and these professionally written legal pages can be created in your theme and/or as a standalone page outside of your theme.
The plugin developers secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress powered site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.
For more information, go here:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your website to be legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal content, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you are making money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your website or blog must comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Non-compliance puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.
Additional Information
Here is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program
- Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising
- Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act
- CAN-SPAM Act Guide
- Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule
- FTC Regulatory Review Web Page
- FTC Rules and Guides Currently Under Review
- The Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force – Commercial Data Privacy and Innovation in the Internet Economy: A Dynamic Policy Framework
- FTC Staff Report: Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
- FTC Final Guides Governing Endorsements and Testimonials
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
Additionally …
- Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
- Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
- AdSense Help – Required Content
- Google AdWords – Information Collection And Use
- Google AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
- ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
- Facebook Platform Policies
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)