Tag: Legal Pages

Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are selling or recommending?

Online laws and regulations are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for material gain, then you will 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 known as BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau Website)

The introduction of these new laws has consequences for various business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, like contextual advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook could disapprove web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a number of advertising or online marketing networks.

If your online business is not compliant, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern online businesses, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be recommending online, and that there are solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your sites become more compliant, such as the tools listed further below.

Is Your Site Compliant?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you use on your website or blog

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone has a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• You’ve informed subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you will do with it.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own site.
• There is no statement on your site letting your visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re selling that you could get paid a financial benefit if visitors buy it.
• You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
• Someone claims that your testimonials are fake and decides to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose that you were given a free copy of a product in your review.
• Your website publishes adult-related content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider also the actual examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required 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 received 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 does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers took a risk 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 picked at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least 2 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 notices or lose access to the Google program whose policies with the violation, 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
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

It’s vitally important to ensure that your digital presence is fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies

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

You must let your visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you do business with.

For example:

Google requires you to display certain information when using many of their products or features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue online with your website with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

Or promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information-based products through places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add legal pages to your website before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you 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 site is compliant with all FTC regulations.

A number of business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

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

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products online via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

Basic Legal Pages To Include In Your Site

If you suspect that your website is lacking in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site should help your website keep out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):

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

As well as the above, you may want to consider implementing one or more of the following pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides financial advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add the right types of disclosure pages to your site. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets users know that you will not receive any kind of payment for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Informs your readers that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they purchase through your affiliate links.
• Review/Sample Copy – Informs readers that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs users 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your WordPress 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 prepared, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend creating a legal folder on your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your web server 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 Site

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that users will be able to access the information from all pages …

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

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu and footer in WordPress, see this tutorial:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In The Blog

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms)

Go here for more information:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to purchase a package of legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

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

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

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 pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described previously.

More information:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using templates, you can keep things very simple using WordPress plugins.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-driven sites worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages Plugin)

If manually setting up legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages …

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

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

• Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other page on your site.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will then 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 any WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks when the user agrees to your legal terms.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear in your main dashboard menu …

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

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, review websites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

You can also select from various pre-configured 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 website to learn more about using this great plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable compliance pages for your site …

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

• Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 of Service
• 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 powered site. You can have legal pages 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 sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

To learn more, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

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

We want your website to be protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal documents, or a legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you do business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with government laws and regulations and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or use online. Your internet presence must comply with a wide range of regulations, some of which you may not even 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 provide legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.

Resources

Here is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to remain 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 – BBB
• 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 …

• 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

We hope this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website.

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