Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you offer or recommend?
As the digital way of life 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 website remains compliant, especially if your web presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
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, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws affect several online business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, like Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising and online marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could also end up facing a whole range 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(s) are required to comply with legal requirements according to laws that govern online businesses, the importance of complying with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be using on your site, and that there are easy solutions that can help your sites become fully compliant, such as the tools listed further below.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice about your website or business. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- Someone suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives people an allergic reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you plan to do with their details.
- Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their website.
- You haven’t informed your site users that you’re an affiliate for the product you are marketing that you could receive an affiliate commission if they purchase products via your affiliate link.
- You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
- Visitors claim that your testimonials are fake and try to sue you.
- You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website contains adult-related content and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider now the following actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could easily become exposed to the risk of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence is legally compliant.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies
Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade in various countries emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You are expected to let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you interact with online.
For example:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue online with your online properties using Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your business using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information products using companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your website complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
There are many business resources that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide a number of references at the end of this article …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you plan to create apps that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to your legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “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 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies)
Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your website is falling short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and third-party service providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to look into including any of these legal pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding correct disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you will not receive for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users be aware that you may receive compensation if they buy through an affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets readers be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to your readers that you were compensated in some form to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors know 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.
Adding Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you should have a 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 Site
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legals directory on your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar (or place them in the footer of your site) to ensure that users will be able to access the information from all your pages …
(It’s important to display legal pages to users on all of your website’s pages)
If you need help adding links to pages on your WP sidebar or footer, refer to this tutorial:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
More information:
Another option is to purchase a set of cut & paste legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & 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 website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.
For more details, go here:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using templates, another option is to use a plugin.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other page on your site.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When users agree to your terms, the page unlocks.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your main dashboard area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, review websites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal page types)
Choose from several built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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, visit this site:
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …
Go here to learn more:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro 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 And Conditions
- 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 site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute 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 for more info:
If hiring legal experts to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some kind of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your business 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 attorney-written legal documentation, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate essential 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 engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) for third-party services and products that you may be promoting or selling online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of 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 are not providing legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your specific business.
References And Resources
Below is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- BBB – 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
Additionally …
- 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
- 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 why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress site.
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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