Is your website legal? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you use or endorse?
Internet laws and regulations were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t prevent someone from taking legal action against you.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, 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 Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau)
These laws has ramifications for various online business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, e.g. contextual ads
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in most advertising or online merchant networks.
If your web presence is not in compliance, you could face a whole range 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 site are required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be recommending on your website, and that there are easy solutions that can help your online properties become more compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations wherever your business is located.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider for a minute what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online workout program.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you plan to do with it.
- Someone steals content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website letting your visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are recommending and may receive a sales commission if they end up buying using your affiliate link.
- You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims that your testimonials are false and decides to sue you.
- You have not disclosed that you have received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
- Your site includes adult-related information and you have not taken sufficient measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.
Consider now the real case studies of costly compliance breaches below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how a website owner can easily become exposed to the risks of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA or PPA Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
it’s important to ensure that your website or blog stays legally compliant.
Complying With Third-Party Services
Compliance with third-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you do business with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires your site to display legal information if using their products. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue online with your blog with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
Or promoting your services through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information products via merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for selling via their network …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for product sellers)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you display clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) 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 plan to do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide a number of references at the end of this article …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you plan to create social networking applications for your website users, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with 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 service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- 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 protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Basic Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If your web site falls short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should keep you out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and 3rd-party providers, and avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider including one or more of these legal pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general financial content)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you’re not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you may derive some form of financial or similar form of benefit if they act on your recommendation and purchase through an affiliate link.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets site users be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs users that you have been 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you will consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legal folder on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then add a link to these 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 kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from every page …
(Display links to legal information to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
More information:
Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut & paste legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
Cut & Paste website legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to add your own business name and URL, 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
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: with 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 each legal form you want added to your website, 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 Pages – WordPress Plugins
As well as using copy & paste legal templates, you can simplify things by using plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully 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 – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your site.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- 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 lockdown. Page unlocks only when users agree to your terms.
- New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature is added to your main dashboard area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)
Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Built-In 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, visit this site:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details go here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 Service
- 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 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 for more info:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a legal firm.
We want your website to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal content, or a WordPress plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
***
As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or using online. Your internet presence must comply with numerous regulations, many of which you may not 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 providing 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 the law pertaining to your business.
Additional Legal Information
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to remain compliant 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
- 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
And …
- 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 why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website using simple resources and WordPress plugins.
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org