Is your website legal? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you use or recommend?
Online laws and regulations are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t protect someone from taking legal action against you.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)
These laws has legal consequences for several online business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve digital products on their network, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in various advertising and online marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be offering online, and that there are plugins for WordPress that can help your online properties become fully compliant, such as the tools that we discuss further below.
Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As stated earlier, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose services or products you endorse on your website or blog
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Are you at risk? Consider what could happen to your business if these scenarios were to occur:
- A customer has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link an allergic reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you plan to do with their details.
- Someone steals content from your site and puts it up on their website.
- You have not divulged to visitors that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and could get paid a sales commission if visitors buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the terms of your return policies.
- Your visitors claim your testimonials are misleading and decide to sue you as a result.
- You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website includes adult content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider now the real examples of costly compliance breaches described:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to provide everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped 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 does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet 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 picked 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% had breached 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 entirely to the Google program with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could easily be exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords User
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s imperative to make sure that your online business remains legally compliant.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
All the big online companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You are expected to let your site visitors know that your website complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you do business with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using their products and service. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your WordPress blog with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense online advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your services through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell digital products via places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages before your products are approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business by making sure that your site complies with FTC guidelines.
There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …
(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you are planning to create apps that integrate with your website, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display 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, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website
If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your site should help keep your business out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and 3rd-party providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider implementing any of these compliance pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general financial content)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets users be aware that you’re not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Notifies visitors that you will benefit financially if they purchase through an affiliate link.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets users know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors 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 Legal Pages Content To Your Website
Ideally, you will consult a lawyer and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add a link to these legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu admin area …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar (or place them in the footer of your site) so that visitors have access to the information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal information to users on all of your website’s pages)
To learn more about adding links to pages on your WP sidebar, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
For more information, go here:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages)
These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: includes inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.
You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as previously described.
For more details, go here:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites you may be interested in checking out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Legal Pages)
If the idea of setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you time.
Some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any other WP page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information is then 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 WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your legal terms.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear in your dashboard area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
You have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, niche websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)
You can also select from various built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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 – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro)
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 of Use
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.
More info:
If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a legal expert.
We want your business to be protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal templates, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you make money online, you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your website must comply with a wide range of regulations, some of which you may not be aware of.
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, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
References And Resources
Below is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to remain compliant and meet legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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
- 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 compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your site.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum