Is your WordPress website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you advertise or recommend?
Internet laws were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws has legal consequences for several business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. contextual ads
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
More importantly, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with legal requirements according to laws that govern business practices online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be advertising on your website, and that there are easy solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider for a moment what could happen to your business if any of the following were to happen:
- A person has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users allergic reactions.
- You’ve informed your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you’ll do with their personal details.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website telling your visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you are promoting and could derive financial benefits if they purchase it.
- You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims the testimonials on your site are fake and tries to sue you.
- You did not disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site contains adult-related information and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.
Consider also these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to issue 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 from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- 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 independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached 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 to the Google program they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could be exposed to the risk of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords User
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to make sure that your website has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to all site visitors.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies
Compliance with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you interact with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires you to display legal information if using their products or features. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue online with your websites with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
Or promoting your products through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell digital products via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for selling via their marketplace …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies 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 interests by ensuring that your site complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.
Many sites provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to resources at the end of this article …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These
If you plan to develop social networking applications that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to various legal pages …
(Apps for social networks 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 sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services on your site using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and 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 policies)
Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your web site falls short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site should help keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and external providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to look into including any of the pages listed below where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Audio/Video Terms (if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add correct disclosures to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets users know that you will not receive compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you may derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Disclosure that informs your readers that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Informs your readers that you have been compensated in some way to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users know 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.
Adding Legal Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legals folder to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add a link to these pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar (or the footer of your website) so that users will be able to access legal information from every page …
(Display links to your legal pages to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu or footer in WordPress using widgets here:
Use Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and website forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms)
More information:
Another option is to purchase a package of cut & paste website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
Cut & Paste website legal templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new Federal Trade Commission guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page 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 your legal pages to your web server as described previously.
More info:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably 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.
Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your site.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when user agrees to your terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear in your navigation menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings)
With WPLegal Pages, you have the option of easily creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)
You can also choose from several pre-written legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin that contains over 20 customizable legal page templates for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro)
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. 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 this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here to learn more:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service required by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or recommending online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole range of regulations, many 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 cannot offer legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
References And Legal Resources
Here is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission 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
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
- Google AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
- ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
- Facebook Platform Policies
We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website or blog using inexpensive methods and resources.
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