Tag: Legal Pages

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

As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important to try and stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your site remains compliant, especially if having a digital presence is an important aspect of your overall business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws has implications for various online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, e.g. Google AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

Without certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t let you list digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook will reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in various advertising or online merchant networks.

Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.

This article explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and lists inexpensive methods and solutions to help make your site legally compliant quickly and easily.

Is Your Site Legally Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice about your website or business. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all laws in your country or region.

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider for a moment what could happen to your business if any of these situations were to occur:

• A customer suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you’ll do with their personal details.
• Someone steals content from your site and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your site making your site users aware that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and may earn an affiliate commission if visitors buy using your link.
• You didn’t spell out the conditions of your return policies.
• Online visitors claim the testimonials on your site are misleading and try to sue you because of it.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website includes adult content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider also these real examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he is now required to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — 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 children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape 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 websites chosen at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 entirely 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 become exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

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

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

All 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 site users know that your business complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you will interact with online.

For example:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue with your sites with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information products with merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to add clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type 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.

There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements

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

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be 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 services or products online via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

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

Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website

If your website or blog is lacking in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and 3rd-party providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

• About Us Page
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

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

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides advice about financial areas or income opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the correct type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you are not being paid for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you may benefit financially if they purchase through your affiliate links.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Discloses to site users that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets site users be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site

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

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

(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)

You can then easily add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can insert these into the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your site) to ensure that visitors can access the information from every page …

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

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer using widgets, see this tutorial:

• Configuring Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar

Use Store-Bought Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to download a set of cut & paste website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• ToS & Conditions of Use: includes inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

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

Visit this site to learn more:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things really simple using plugins.

Here are some great legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing WP Legal Pages …

WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced 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 reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:

• Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WordPress page.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your WordPress 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 WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When the user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will be added to your main dashboard area …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings)

With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)

Select from a number of pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In 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 this handy plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …

For more details go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 – 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 one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some type of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire a legal expert.

We want your business to be legally safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal forms, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see 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.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and any guidelines and terms of service for third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or sell online. Your website must comply with a number of laws and regulatory guidelines, 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 cannot provide legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

References And Legal Resources

Here is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• 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 – 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• United States Copyright Office

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 compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website using simple and cost-effective legal resources and solutions.

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