Tag: Legal Pages

One of the worst predicaments a website owner can find themselves in is to break the law.

As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if having a digital presence plays an important role in your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly 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 regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws affect various online business categories, including:

• Any kind of advertising, e.g. inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook could disapprove web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a number of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

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

The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website are subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern online businesses, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be advertising on your site, and that there are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based in.

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider for one minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A customer has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness program.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not defined what you will do with their details.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website making your site users aware that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and may receive a financial benefit if visitors decide to buy through your link.
• You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund or return policies.
• Your visitors claim that your testimonials are false and decide 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 contains adult information and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.

Consider also these real case studies 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. Cost = $390,000.
• 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 Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 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% were in breach of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 with warnings 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 easily be exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

You need to make sure that your online business has the right legal pages and clearly accessible to site users.

Complying With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.

You are expected to let your site visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you do business with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue with your site with Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your business using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information-based products via places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for selling via their network …

(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are 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 plan to do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

You can find many online resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide links to useful resources to a number of these at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you are planning to develop apps that will integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to 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 you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue 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 need to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Essential Legal Pages To Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance

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

Adding the following compliance pages to your website should keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and third-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):

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

In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into including any of these pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general advice about financial areas or income opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to downloadable media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right disclosure information to your site is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets visitors know that you will not receive any form of payment for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your readers be aware that you will receive compensation if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Review/Sample Copy – Informs readers that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the content.
• 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you should consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site

If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in typical web page formatting (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 (e.g. via FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)

You can then add a link to your legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can insert these into your WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your website) to ensure that users have access to legal information from every page …

(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 here:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets On Your WordPress Blog Sidebar

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)

Go here for more details:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can download a set of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates)

These templates were written 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 Pages include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new FTC regulations and guidelines that came into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

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

Go here for more information:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

Plugins – Legal Pages

As well as using cut & paste legal templates, you can simplify things using WordPress plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …

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

Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to 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 around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks only 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 feature will be added to your WordPress dashboard section …

(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)

With WP Legal Pages, you have the option of easily creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal page types)

Select from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Pre-configured 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

To learn more about this plugin, visit this site:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …

To learn more about the plugin go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

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

Go here for more details:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire the services of a lawyer.

We want your site to be legally protected!

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 as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies and the terms of service and guidelines of third-party sites that you may be promoting or selling online. Your internet presence must comply with a number of regulations, some of which you may not 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your site may require to comply and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:

• 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 – Better Business Bureau
• 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

In Addition …

• 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 compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site.

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