Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are promoting or using?
As the digital way of life continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if having a digital presence plays an important role in your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these new laws affect several business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, like pay-per-click advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a number of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your site(s) are subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be advertising online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become more compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. As previously stated, this article is designed only to 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 business practices online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party companies whose products or services you endorse on your website or blog
The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what could happen to your business if these situations were to take place:
- A customer has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness program.
- The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people an adverse reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you will do with their personal details.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their own site.
- You haven’t informed your site visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re selling that you may get paid a financial benefit if visitors decide to buy through your affiliate link.
- You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your return policies.
- Visitors claim the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you because of it.
- You have not disclosed that you have received a free copy in a product review.
- Your site includes adult-related information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider also the following actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with 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 details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least two 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, 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, CPC or PPA Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords Advertiser
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s imperative to ensure that your website or blog stays fully compliant with the law.
Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
Compliance with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you do business with.
For example:
Google requires you to display legal information if using their services or product features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your website using Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)
And even promoting your services or products via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell digital products with merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add certain legal pages to your site before your products are approved for sale in their marketplace …
(Policy requirements product vendors selling via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially if you plan to sell or promote products using testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any kind of business 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 interests by making sure that your site complies with all FTC regulations.
There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop applications that integrate with your website, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online using affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you have been wondering whether “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 and policies)
What Compliance Pages Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Protected From Legal Compliance Issues?
If your web site lacks in terms 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 most regulatory authorities and external providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider implementing one or more of these pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the correct type of content disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs users that you will not be receiving any form of payment for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you will be compensated if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Disclosure that informs users that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to visitors that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets readers know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, 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 as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals folder on your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu administration …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your site) so that users will be able to access legal information from every page …
(Display links to legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu, refer to this tutorial:
Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable internet forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
More information:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described earlier.
More info:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using cut & paste legal templates, you can keep things really simple by using plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress websites and blogs that you may be interested in checking out:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you loads of headaches.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages:
- Built-in Templates – 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 just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any page on your site.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When a user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your WordPress dashboard area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings Area)
With WPLegal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, niche websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)
Choose from various built-in 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
Go here to learn more this useful plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable compliance templates for your digital presence …
For more details go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
Legal Suite Pro 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 Use
- 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. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here for more details:
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 website until you can afford professional assistance.
We want your business to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal content, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you make money online, you need to ensure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) for 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or selling online. Your internet presence must comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law pertaining to your business.
Resources
Below is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC 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
- United States 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
- 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add essential legal pages to your site.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now