Category: WordPress Configuration

Is your WordPress site legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you are recommending or using?

As the digital realm continues to grow at such a fast pace and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important to try and stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence plays an important role in your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)

These laws has legal ramifications for various business activities, including:

• Any form of advertising, including Google AdWords
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will reject web applications, and you will not be allowed into most advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

This guide explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website using simple methods and resources.

Is Your Site Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations wherever you do business.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• Someone suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness program.
• The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing prospective subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you’ll do with their details.
• Someone copies content from your site and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your site letting visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re marketing that you could derive an affiliate commission if visitors end up purchasing through your affiliate link.
• You have not spelled out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims that your testimonials are fake and decides to sue you.
• You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website publishes adult-related content and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.

Consider too these real 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 (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $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 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 private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 with warnings or lose access entirely 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 become exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

it’s important to make sure that your online business complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

All the leading websites and government agencies that regulate trade in most countries emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.

You must let your site visitors know that your website complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will interact with.

For example:

Google requires you to display certain information when using their services or product features. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue online with your WordPress site with Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

And even promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell products online using merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add a number of legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many sites are 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 companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

There are many resources sites for businesses that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …

(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you plan to create apps for your site users, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide access to 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 sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services online via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your site 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 have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies)

Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance

If your website falls short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following legal pages to your site should help your site stay out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and third-party providers, and avoid possible legal issues):

• About Us Page
• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above, you may want to consider including any of the pages listed below:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides information about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add the right types of disclosure pages to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs users that you will not receive for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you will benefit financially if they buy through an affiliate link.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets your visitors be aware that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs site users that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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 Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you will consult a lawyer 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

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 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 …

(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)

You can then add links to your legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can insert these into your WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your website) so that visitors can access legal information from all of your pages …

(It’s important to display links to your legal information on all of your site’s pages)

We have written a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer using widgets here:

• How To Use WordPress Widgets

Legal Templates

You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more details, visit this site:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to download a package of website legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)

These legal 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 web 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 (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC regulations that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described previously.

Go here for more information:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages instead …

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 site and save you time.

Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:

• Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages like every other WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your legal terms.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your WP dashboard area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

This allows you to view, create and edit legal pages from the admin area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate sites, medical sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site dropdown menu)

Select from several pre-written legal templates …

(WP 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 about using this plugin, visit the plugin website:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users that contains over 20 customizable compliance pages for your website …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

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 Service
• 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 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 less than one minute and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your website to be protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or a plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the terms of service and guidelines provided by 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or offering online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

Resources

Below is a useful list of websites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to stay compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC 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
• 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
• United States Copyright Office

See Also …

• 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 and easily add legal pages to your website.

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