Is your WordPress site legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you are selling or recommending?
Online laws and regulations were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
The new laws affect several online business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, including Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote most advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your site are subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern online business practices, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you may be advertising on your website, and that there are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugins that we discuss further below.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you recommend
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A customer has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
- Your opt-in list provides a statement informing prospective subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you plan to do with the details you’ve collected.
- Someone steals content from your site and publishes it on their website.
- You have not divulged to your visitors that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and will receive a commission if visitors purchase it.
- You did not spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
- Online visitors claim that your testimonials are fake and try to sue you as a result.
- You did not disclose that you received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
- Your website includes adult content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underage children.
Consider also these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of at least 3 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming targeted for non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords User
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business is legally compliant.
Compliance With Third-Party Services
Big companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you do business with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information if using their products. This includes using services like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue online with your websites with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell products online through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their network …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
Various sites provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide references and links to resources to a number of these at the end of this article …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance
If you are planning to create apps that integrate with your website, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies)
What Legal Information Should You Add To Your Site To Be Safe From Legal Compliance Issues?
If you suspect that your web site is falling short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your site should keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and external providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into including one or more of the pages listed below where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms (if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the right disclosures to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you will not receive for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you will be compensated if they buy through your affiliate links.
- Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to site users that you have received a review or sample copy of the product you’re writing about by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors know that you have been compensated in some form 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legals folder to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then add a link to your legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar (or the footer of your site) to ensure that users can access the information from every page …
(Display legal information to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Use Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)
Go here for more info:
Alternatively, you can download a package of cut and paste legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described previously.
More information:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using templates, you can simplify things using plugins.
Here are some WordPress plugins you may be interested in using:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If the idea of setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – 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 checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks only when user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your main dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, review websites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page type drop down menu)
You can also select from various 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
Visit this site to learn more this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites that includes over twenty customizable legal templates for your digital presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)
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 Plugin For WordPress – 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.
For more information, go here:
If hiring lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and any terms of service and guidelines for third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or offer online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant 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, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
Additional Resources
Below is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site 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
- 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
Plus …
- Google Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
- Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
- Google 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
We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add legal pages to your site using simple and cost-effective methods, resources and plugins.
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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)