Tag: Legal Pages

Is your WordPress website legal? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are endorsing or offering?

As the digital way of life continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence plays an important part in your business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

The introduction of these new laws has legal implications for several online business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, like pay-per-click advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote many advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also face a number 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 website are subject to certain legal requirements according to laws that govern online business practices, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be advertising on your site, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress users that can help your site become fully compliant, such as the tools that we list further below.

Is Your Site Breaking The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. As previously stated, the aim of this article is only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws governing your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you offer on your website or blog

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider for a moment what would happen to your business if any of the following were to happen:

• A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate 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 clearly spelled out what you’ll do with it.
• Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your site letting visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are recommending that you will derive a sales commission if visitors purchase through your affiliate link.
• You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
• Visitors claim that your testimonials are false and try to sue you as a result.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website includes adult-related information and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider now these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’re now required to provide everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer received 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 internet 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 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 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 exposed to non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

You need to ensure that your online business stays legally compliant.

Complying With Third-Party Companies

Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade 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 all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you interact with.

For example:

Google requires your site to display certain information if using their products and features. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your WordPress blogs using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell products online using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically 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 money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. you should protect your business by making sure that your site complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.

A number of business resource sites provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See the additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(It’s important to structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to develop social networking applications for your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about your legal pages …

(Apps for social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with their 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, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

What Compliance Information Should I Add To My Site To Be Compliant?

If your website lacks in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your website should help your website stay out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

As well as the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of these compliance pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides financial content)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms (if you allow users to download media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Discloses to your visitors that you will not receive compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets site users be aware that you may be compensated if they purchase through your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Discloses to visitors that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product you’re writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Informs users that you have been compensated in some way to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets readers know 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Website

Ideally, you will consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website

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

We recommend adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …

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

You can then easily add links to your pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from all of your pages …

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

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

• Using WordPress Widgets

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)

For more information, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to purchase a package of cut & paste website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC regulations and guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described earlier.

To learn more, visit this site:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using templates, you can keep things really simple by using a plugin.

Here are some WordPress plugins that you may be interested in using:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

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

Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Legal 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 the legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like any page on your website.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of 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 check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to the terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will display inside your main dashboard section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

You can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page type menu)

Choose from a number of built-in 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

Go here to learn more about using this plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites containing over 20 customizable legal pages for your digital presence …

Learn We’ve written an in-depth review of this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(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 & Conditions
• 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 powered site. You can have legal pages 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 websites.

Go here to learn more:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your website to be legally safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate necessary 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 do business online, you need to ensure that your website is compliant with all government regulations and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or recommending online. Your website must comply with various regulations, some 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.

References And Resources

Below is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to stay compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• FTC 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
• 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
• 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

We hope this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using inexpensive resources and solutions.

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