Is your WordPress site legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you offer or promote?
Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not protect someone from taking legal action against you.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of new laws affect several online business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, like contextual ads
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed to enroll in many advertising and online merchant 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 website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern business practices online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be using online, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress that can help your sites become compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all laws wherever your business operates in.
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Consider for a minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer has a heart attack after using your online fitness program.
- The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone allergic reactions.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you’ll do with their details.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog letting visitors know that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and could derive a financial benefit if visitors buy through your link.
- You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund or return policies.
- Someone claims that your testimonials are fake and decides to sue you because of it.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website contains adult content and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider too the actual case studies of costly compliance breaches described:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 notices or lose access to the Google program whose policies they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risk of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords User
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog remains fully compliant with the law.
Complying With 3rd-Party Companies
Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade in many countries emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You must let your site users know that your website complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires you to display legal information when using many of their services. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue with your blogs using Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
Or promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell products online using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their network …
(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by making sure that your site complies with FTC guidelines.
Many business resource sites provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See our additional references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop social networking applications that will integrate with your website, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies)
What Legal Information Should I Add To My Site To Be Legally Compliant?
If your website or blog falls short in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website should help you stay out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of these pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general health or medical advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Video/Audio Terms (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs readers that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Notifies users that you may receive compensation if they buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Sample Or review Copy – Informs site users that you have received a review or sample copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your readers be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to these pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your site) so that users have access to the information from all your pages …
(Display links to legal information to users on all of your site’s pages)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar, see this tutorial:
Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
Visit this site to learn more:
Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut & paste website legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your legal pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects Federal Trade Commission regulations brought into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.
More info:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using templates, you can simplify things by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users that you should check out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s an affordable and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.
Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very 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 – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your WordPress dashboard menu …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)
Select from various pre-configured legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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 this WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
Legal Suite Pro 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 And Conditions
- 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 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 this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here for more information:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some kind of basic legal protection on your site until you can afford legal services.
We want your site to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal content, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to ensure that your website stays compliant with all government regulations and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by third-party sites that you may be promoting or selling online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, 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 offer no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
References And Legal Resources
Here is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- Better Business Bureau Website
- 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
- US Copyright Office
And …
- Google Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
- Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
- AdSense Help – Required Content
- Google AdWords – Information Collection And Use
- 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 why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple and cost-effective legal resources and WordPress plugins.
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