Category: Management Plugins

Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you use or promote?

Internet laws were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against you.

New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also referred to as the BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau)

The new laws has ramifications for various online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, including Google AdWords or AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

Without certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal 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 may shut down your account, Facebook could reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote various advertising and online marketing networks.

If your web presence is not compliant, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

In this guide, we discuss the importance of having a legally compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your site.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice on this website. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations governing business online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you promote on your website or blog

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives someone allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing prospective subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you will do with their details.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your site making your visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you are promoting and may earn a financial benefit if visitors buy via your link.
• You don’t spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims that your testimonials are misleading and tries to sue you.
• You did not disclose that you have received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
• Your website publishes adult-related information and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider also these real examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with 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 information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many 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 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk being targeted for litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

It’s imperative to make sure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and information accessible to all site users.

Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies

All the leading companies and government agencies that regulate trade in many countries emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.

You must let your site users know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you do business with.

For example:

Google requires you to display legal information if using their products. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your blog using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell information-based products through places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for selling via their network …

(Policy requirements digital product vendors using ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your website complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.

You can find many resources sites for businesses that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide a number of references at the end of this article …

(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you plan to create apps for your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about 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 companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then 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 online 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 need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you have ever wondered 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, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

Essential Legal Pages To Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance

If your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help your business stay out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and external service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us Page
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

Additionally, you may want to consider including any of the pages listed below:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general advice about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets site users be aware that you will not receive compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs users that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets site users know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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.

Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Website

Ideally, you should consult a lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Uploading Legal Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in typical web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend creating a legals folder on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder via FTP …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages using FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your website) so that users have access to the information from all pages …

(It’s important to display links to your legal information on all of your site’s pages)

To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To Your Site

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut & paste legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal pages were created 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 insert your own business details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC regulations that came into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, 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 to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.

More info:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

WordPress Legal Plugins

As well as using legal templates, you can simplify things using plugins.

Here are some great WordPress plugins that you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

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

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you a great deal of time.

Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – 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 easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When a user agrees to the legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will be added to your main dashboard section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal pages)

Choose from various built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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 about this useful plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

total website compliance and disclaimer solution …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

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 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 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.

Visit this site to learn more:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your site to be legally protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal templates, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or sell online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.

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, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Resources

Below is a useful 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:

• Federal Trade Commission 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

See 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

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website.

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