Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you do business with?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s going on and ensure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if having a digital presence is an integral part of your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites 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 BBB, or Better Business Bureau. 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)
The new laws has consequences for various online business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, including Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t 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 accepted into many advertising and online merchant networks.
If your online presence is not compliant, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with certain legalities in accordance with the laws that govern businesses online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be advertising on your site, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your online properties become more compliant, such as the plugins that we list further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws in your country or region.
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness program.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you plan to do with their personal details.
- Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your site letting your visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you are marketing and will get paid a financial benefit if visitors purchase it.
- You did not spell out the terms of your refund policies.
- Your visitors claim that your testimonials are misleading and try to sue you as a result.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website contains adult-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider now the following real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
- 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 information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 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% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of 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 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 you could easily be exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s vitally important to ensure that your website complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Leading online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will do business with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their products. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your online properties with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense online advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your business using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell digital products with merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages before your products are approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policy 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
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically 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 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. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many online resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide references and links to additional resources to a number of these at the end of this article …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you are planning to create applications that integrate with your site, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you are 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 online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required 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 whether “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 websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your website falls short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following legal pages to your website will keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and external providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of these pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides money-making information)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right type of content disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs site users that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your readers be aware that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
- Review/Sample Copy – Discloses to users that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to readers that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs users that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with 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 Site
Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in typical 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 legal directory in your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add links to these pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website) so that visitors have access to the information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal pages on all of your site’s pages)
If you need help adding links to pages on your WordPress sidebar using widgets, refer to this tutorial:
Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)
Go here for more info:
Alternatively, you can download a set of cut & paste website legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- 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 page on your website for every legal form you want to add 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 earlier.
For more information, go here:
Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using templates, you can simplify things by using a plugin.
Here are some WordPress plugins that you should check out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages:
- Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- 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 lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your legal terms.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will be added to your main WordPress dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
You can easily create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, medical sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)
Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WordPress 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
To learn more this WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
Go here to learn more:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)
Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 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. Your legal pages can be 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 websites.
More info:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some type of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire a legal expert.
We want your site to be legally 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 templates, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you make money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or advertise online. Your digital presence must comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Non-compliance 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. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.
Legal Resources
Here is a useful list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your site may require 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
- 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
- United States Copyright Office
Also …
- 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 compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using inexpensive solutions.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum