Tag: Legal Pages

Is your WordPress 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 services or products you advertise or promote?

As the digital way of life continues growing at such a fast pace and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you try to stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if having a digital presence plays an important role in your overall business strategy.

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

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

These laws affect various business activities, including:

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

Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

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

The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website may be required to comply with certain legalities, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be offering online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become compliant, such as the tools that we list further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice about your website or business. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all laws wherever you do business.

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider for one minute what could happen to your business if any of the situations below were to occur:

• A user has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users skin rashes.
• You’ve informed your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you’ll do with the information you have collected.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website telling your site visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you are endorsing and could receive a financial benefit if visitors purchase it.
• You have not spelled out the terms of your return policies.
• Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decide to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose that you have received a free copy of a product in your review.
• Your website contains adult-related information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.

Consider now the actual examples of costly compliance breaches described:

• 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 provide 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 without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
• 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 independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 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 a target of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

You need to make sure that your online business has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to all you site users.

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

All the big online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.

You must let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will engage with online.

For example:

Google requires websites to display legal information when using many of their products and features. This includes using services like Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your blogs with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information products with companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies 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. it’s best to protect your business interests by making sure that your website complies with FTC guidelines.

A number of online resources provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the additional references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …

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

Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These

If you plan to create applications for your site, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others require you to provide information about your legal pages …

(Social networking apps also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have ever wondered 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 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

What Compliance Information Pages Does Your Website Need To Be Compliant?

If your website or blog lacks in areas 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 authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the following pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general financial information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (if you provide users with access to media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets your visitors be aware that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets visitors know that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample/Review Copy – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Informs users that you have been compensated in some form 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your Site

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

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website

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

We recommend adding a legal directory to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory using FTP …

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

You can then add links to these pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu admin area …

(WordPress Menu)

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your site) to ensure that users will be able to access the information from every web page …

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

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• Adding WordPress Widgets To Your Website

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)

For more information, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can download a package of cut and paste website legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates)

These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.

The legal forms 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 accommodates Federal Trade Commission regulations that came into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• 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 WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described earlier.

More information:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates

Plugins – Legal Pages

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

Here are some great legal WordPress plugins that you may be interested in checking out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages Plugin)

If the idea of creating legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website a lot easier and save you time.

Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when user agrees to your terms.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature is added to your navigation area …

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

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

With WP Legal Pages, you have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

Select from several pre-written legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 plugin, visit this website:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress websites with over twenty customizable legal templates for your website …

Learn more here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(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 of Use
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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 plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a legal expert.

We want your business to be legally safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or plugins 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 Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you do business online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of third-party sites that you may decide to promote or advertise online. Your website or blog must comply with a number of laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even be aware of.

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 cannot provide 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 the law concerning your specific business.

References And Resources

Here is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website 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
• Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – 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
• United States Copyright Office

See Also …

• Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
• Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
• Google 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

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