Tag: Legal Pages

Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you are offering or endorsing?

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t protect someone from taking legal action against you.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The introduction of these laws has ramifications for several online business categories, including:

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

If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in a number of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.

Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website or blog(s) may be required to comply with certain legalities in accordance with the laws that govern businesses online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be using on your website, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Is Your Site Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice on this website. As stated previously, the purpose of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you recommend

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider for a minute what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A user suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
• You’ve informed your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you plan to do with it.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting your visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re recommending and will receive a financial benefit if visitors purchase it.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are false and tries to sue you as a result.
• You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
• Your website contains adult information and you have not taken sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider also these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $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 copped a massive $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 does not allow users to scrape UIDs. 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 websites chosen at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed 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 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 you could easily become exposed to the risk of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords User
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

It’s vitally important to make sure that your online business complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.

You are expected to let your visitors know that your business complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will do business with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires your site to display certain information when using their services or features. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue online with your WordPress blogs using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information-based products using merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add certain legal pages to your website before your products can be approved for selling via their networks …

(Policy requirements digital product vendors selling via ClickBank)

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

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often results in 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 type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your website complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.

You can find many sites that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you are planning to create applications that integrate with your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others will require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Social networking apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to 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 services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay 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 all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
• If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

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

What Legal Information Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Legally Compliant?

If your website or blog falls short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will keep you out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and third-party providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

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

In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider implementing one or more of these legal pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides money-making information)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you’re not being paid for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Notifies visitors that you may derive some form of financial benefit if they purchase through your affiliate links.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your visitors know that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
• 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your Site

Ideally, you will consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Uploading Legal Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.

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

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

You can then add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …

(WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and display clearly to your visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar menu (or the footer of your site) so that visitors have access to legal information from every page …

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

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Add Widgets To WordPress

Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

For more information, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut and paste legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC regulations that came into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• 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 for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your web server as previously described.

To learn more, visit this site:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

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

Here are some plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your website a lot easier and save you loads of headaches.

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

• Built-in Legal Templates – 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 just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely 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 page on your site.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature is added to your dashboard menu …

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

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)

Choose from a number of pre-configured legal templates …

(WP 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

Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 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. 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 the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

Go here for more information:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your site to be legally protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal content, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) for third-party services and products that you may be promoting or advertising online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.

Resources

Here is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• 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
• 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
• 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 provided above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site.

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