Tag: Legal Pages

As a business owner, the last thing you want to do is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

Internet laws are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes goods and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, then you need to 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 (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 several online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, including inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove your web applications, and you will not be allowed to enroll in various advertising and online marketing networks.

You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.

This guide explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and explains simple methods to make your WordPress website or blog legally compliant.

Is Your Site Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As stated earlier, the purpose of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you recommend on your website

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Consider what would happen to your business if the following were to take place:

• A customer has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users skin rashes.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you plan to do with it.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website making your visitors aware that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate that you could receive a commission if they decide to purchase through your affiliate link.
• You did not spell out the terms of your refund policies.
• A visitor claims your testimonials are false and tries to sue you because of it.
• You haven’t disclosed that you received a free copy in your product review.
• Your website includes adult content and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.

Consider also these real case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to issue everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• 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 private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 notices 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 a website owner can easily become exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

You need to do whatever is necessary 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 Companies Terms And Policies

Big 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 visitors know that your business complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you do business with online.

For example:

Google requires you to display legal information when using their services. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue online with your online properties with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell digital products using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will be required to add certain legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements digital product vendors selling through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

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 easily reveal that many business are still 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 website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type of business 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 interests by ensuring that your website complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.

You can find many business resource sites that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to resources at the end of this article …

(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you are planning to create apps that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about various legal pages …

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• 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, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Site

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

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should help your site stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and external service providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

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

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

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general financial information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – Lets visitors know that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Informs users that you may receive compensation if they buy through your affiliate link.
• Review/Sample Copy – Informs your readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors know that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets users know 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 Content To Your Site

Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Site

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

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

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website

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 sidebar menu (or the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors can access legal information from all of your pages …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your WP sidebar using widgets here:

• Adding And Configuring Widgets On The WordPress Sidebar Navigation Area

Store-Bought Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

Visit this website to learn more:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to purchase a set of website legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)

These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form 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 regulations that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

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

For more information, go here:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

As well as using copy & paste legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.

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

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages instead …

WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.

Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can 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 easy to edit 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 every other WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When users agree to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will be added to your navigation menu section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche sites, AdSense sites, etc …

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

You can also select from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – 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

Visit this site to learn more this powerful plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …

More info:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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 And Conditions
• 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 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 sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form 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 Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

***

As stated earlier, if you make money online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service and guidelines required by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your website or blog must comply with numerous 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.

Additional Resources

Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to comply and meet legal obligations:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Better Business Bureau Website
• 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

Also …

• Google 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
• 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site.

***