Is your website legal? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you are doing business with?
Internet laws were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you must 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 to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws affect several online business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, including inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into most advertising and online merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
In this article, we look at why it’s important to have a compliant website and describe simple resources and solutions to help make your site legally compliant.
Is Your Site Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever you do business.
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A person suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you plan to do with the details you’ve collected.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their website.
- You have not divulged to visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you’re marketing that you will get paid a commission if visitors buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund and return policies.
- Your visitors claim the testimonials on your site are misleading and decide to sue you as a result.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your site contains adult-related information and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider now the following actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete his offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to issue a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 notices or lose access to the Google program with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming a target of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
it’s important to make sure that your digital presence has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to all you site visitors.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
All of the big websites and government agencies that regulate trade in many countries emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your site users know that your business complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you engage with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information if using many of their products and features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue online with your sites using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense online advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information-based products using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add various legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for vendors selling via ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you 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. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
A number of online business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you plan to create social networking applications that will integrate with your site, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide access to your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site
If you suspect that your web site is falling short in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website will keep your business out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to consider adding any of the pages listed below if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general health or medical information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Audio/Video Terms (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add the right disclosures to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets visitors know that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users be aware that you may be compensated if they purchase through your affiliate link.
- Sample/Review Copy – Disclosure that informs site users that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets users know that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your Site
Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually
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 creating a legals directory in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)
You can then add links to your pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website) to ensure that users can access legal information from every web page …
(Display links to your legal information on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu or footer in WordPress here:
Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
More info:
Another option is to download a set of cut & paste legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your legal 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 reflects new Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines brought into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- Terms of Service (ToS) & 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 every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described previously.
More information:
WordPress Legal Plugins
In addition to using cut & paste legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using WP Legal Pages …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you loads of headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree to the terms, the page unlocks.
- New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your main dashboard menu …
(WP Legal Pages – Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings Area)
With WPLegal Pages, you can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site menu)
Choose from a number of pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In 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 useful plugin, visit this website:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …
Go here to learn more:
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 Use
- 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 powered 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 (even sites that you decide to sell).
More information:
If hiring legal experts to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some type of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a legal firm.
We want your business to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or selling online. Your internet presence 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
Resources
Here is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to remain 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
- 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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
- 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 add essential legal pages to your site using simple and inexpensive solutions.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)