Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you are using or promoting?
Online laws were designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, you will need to 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 to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
These laws affect various business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, like Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into a number of advertising and online merchant networks.
If your web presence is not in compliance, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website are required to comply with various legalities according to laws that govern business practices online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be selling on your site, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress users that can help your online properties become fully compliant, such as the tools listed further below.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice about your website or business. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations wherever your business is based.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider for a moment what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A person has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives people an adverse reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you will do with their personal details.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own site.
- There is no statement on your site letting your site visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing and will get paid a sales commission if visitors end up buying through your link.
- You did not spell out the terms of your refund policies.
- A visitor claims your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you.
- You didn’t disclose that you were given a free copy in a product review.
- Your site includes adult information and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider now the following actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’re now required to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $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 UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming exposed to non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s vitally important to ensure that your online business complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Complying with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are obligated to let your site visitors know that your website complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you will interact with online.
For example:
Google requires you to display legal information when using many of their services or features. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue with your sites using Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell digital products with merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add various legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for digital product vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
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 easily reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been 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 business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC guidelines.
Many online business resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the 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 apps for your website, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others will require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether you are 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 as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, 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’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, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Legal Information Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Compliant?
If your website is falling short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website will help your business keep out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external providers, and avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to consider implementing any of the pages listed below if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides advice about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you will not receive any type of payment for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs users that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through affiliate links on your site.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Informs site users that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your visitors know that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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 Legal Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you should consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal content for you in standard web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals folder on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add links to your legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can add these to the sidebar menu (or the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that users can access the information from every web page …
(Display links to legal pages to users on all of your website’s pages)
If you need help displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar or footer using widgets, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can find attorney-prepared downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
More info:
Alternatively, you can purchase a package of legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- ToS & 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 each 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 web server as previously described.
More info:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using legal templates, another option is to use plugins.
Here are some great WordPress plugins that you should check out:
WP Legal Pages
(WP Legal Pages Plugin)
If setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WP Legal Pages …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you a great deal of time.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Templates – Includes 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 around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree to your terms, the page unlocks.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear in your main WP dashboard menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal page types)
You can also select from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Built-In 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 about this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(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 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 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.
Go here to learn more:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford a solicitor.
We want your site to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates essential 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, it’s important that your website complies with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice here. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
Resources
Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply 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
- Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB
- 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
Also …
- 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple solutions.
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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