Is your WordPress site legal? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you advertise or recommend?
Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect consumers and apply to any person 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 will not excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.
New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for commercial gain, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
These laws has implications for several business activities, including:
- Any kind 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, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook will reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote many advertising and online merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your site may be subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern online businesses, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be endorsing online, and that there are solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your websites become fully compliant, such as the tools listed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern business online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose services or products you offer on your website or blog
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Are you at risk? Consider for one moment what would happen to your business if any of the situations below were to take place:
- A person has a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you plan to do with their personal details.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog letting your visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you are selling that you will get paid a commission if visitors buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund or return policies.
- Online visitors claim your testimonials are misleading and try to sue you.
- You have not disclosed that you received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
- Your site publishes adult content and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider too these real case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with 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 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 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could become exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords Advertiser
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s imperative to ensure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services
All of the leading companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your site users know that your business complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you do business with online.
For example:
Google requires websites to display certain information if using their services and product features. This includes using services like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Monetizing your blog using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
Or promoting your products or services through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell products online through merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages before your products can be approved for sale in their networks …
(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.
Various business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide references and links to additional resources to a number of these at the end of this article …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you plan to develop apps that integrate with your website, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide access to your legal pages …
(Social networking apps also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything on your site via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or using Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
Basic Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If your website or blog lacks in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will help you keep out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and external service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider implementing any of the pages listed below where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides financial advice)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right disclosure information to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs your readers that you may receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets your readers be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your readers know that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs readers that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer and ask them to 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 Site
If someone prepares the legal content for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add links to these legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can add these to your sidebar (or the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors will be able to access legal information from all pages …
(It’s important to display links to legal pages on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress using widgets here:
Use Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
More information:
Another option is to purchase a set of legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)
These legal templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects Federal Trade Commission guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as previously described.
More information:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things very simple using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-driven sites you may be interested in checking out:
WP Legal Pages
(WP Legal Pages Plugin)
If the idea of manually setting up legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using WP Legal Pages instead …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any page on your site.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your terms.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear in your WP dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to 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 types of websites, such as business websites with products, review sites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Type of Site menu)
Choose from a number of 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
For more details about this useful plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro)
Legal Suite Pro 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 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 powered 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.
For more details, go here:
If using the services of legal experts to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some kind of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a solicitor.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or a plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
***
As stated earlier, if you do any type of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. Your digital presence must comply with numerous regulations, 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, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
Resources
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to comply 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
Plus …
- 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 why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website.
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org