Category: Engagement Plugins

Is your website legal? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you are endorsing or advertising?

Online laws and regulations are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes goods and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not prevent someone from taking legal action against you.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites 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 (US based) 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)

These laws has consequences for various online business activities, including:

• Any kind of advertising, like text link ads, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products on their network, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a number of advertising and online merchant networks.

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

The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your site(s) may be subject to legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business, the importance of complying with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you may be offering on your site, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your online properties become compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. As stated previously, the aim of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations governing your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you recommend

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness program.
• The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you will do with their details.
• Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your website informing your visitors that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and could derive financial benefits if visitors buy it.
• You did not spell out the terms of your return policies.
• Someone claims that your testimonials are false and tries to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website publishes adult information and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.

Consider also the documented case studies of costly compliance breaches described:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $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 copped 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 UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars 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% were in breach of 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 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 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 risks of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

It’s vitally important to make sure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and clearly accessible to your site visitors.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.

Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.

You are required to let your site users know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will interact with online.

For example:

Google requires websites to display certain information if using many of their services. This includes using features like Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Monetizing your WordPress blogs using Google AdSense online advertising …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your site via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell information products via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add various legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements product vendors selling through ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies 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 reveals that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind of selling 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 complies with all FTC regulations.

There are many sites that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to develop apps that will integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether you may be 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 are considering promoting services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

What Compliance Information Pages Should You Add To Your Website To Be Compliant?

If you suspect that your website is lacking in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Website Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the pages above, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the pages listed below:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general content about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to download media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding correct disclosure information to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs readers that you are not receiving any type of compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
• Review/Sample Copy – Discloses to your readers that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your readers that you have been compensated in some way to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors 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.

How To Add Compliance 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.

Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend adding a legals directory to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)

You can then easily add links to these pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your website) to ensure that users have access to legal information from all pages …

(Display links to your legal information on all of your website’s pages)

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

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Site

Store-Bought Legal Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting websites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

To learn more, visit this website:

• Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms

Alternatively, you can download a package of cut & paste legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• 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 for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described earlier.

For more details, go here:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

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

Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin)

If the idea of creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you many headaches.

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

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to your legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear in your dashboard area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review sites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages – Type of Site dropdown menu)

Select from various built-in legal templates …

(WordPress 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

Go here to learn more this useful plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs containing over 20 customizable legal pages for your web presence …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

This 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 – 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 plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

Go here for more info:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional legal services.

We want your business to be legally safe!

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

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site is compliant with government regulations and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or sell online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, 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. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way 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 websites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission 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
• US Copyright Office

See 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
• 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website or blog.

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