Tag: Legal Pages

Is your WordPress website legal? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you are endorsing or using?

Online laws and regulations are designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Every website owner 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 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau Website)

The introduction of new laws has legal consequences for several business categories, including:

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

If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote most advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

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

The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website or blog(s) may be subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be advertising on your website, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress that can help your website become compliant, such as the tools that we discuss further below.

Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice in this article. As previously stated, the aim of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws governing business practices online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you promote on your website or blog

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• Someone has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness program.
• The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives someone an allergic reaction.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing prospective subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you’ll do with it.
• Someone copies content from your site and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your site letting your visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are promoting that you may earn a financial benefit if they purchase the product via your link.
• You haven’t spelled out the terms of your refund policies.
• Someone claims the testimonials on your site are fake and tries to sue you as a result.
• You have not disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website publishes adult-related information and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider too these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’re now required to issue a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them 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 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 they had infringed, 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 litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

it’s important to ensure that your digital presence has the right legal pages and information accessible to your site visitors.

Complying With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.

Leading online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.

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

For example:

Google requires you to display legal information when using their products or features. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Monetizing your blog using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

Or promoting your site through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information-based products using companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will be required to add a number of legal pages before your products are approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites 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 plan to do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC regulations.

There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See our additional references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …

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

Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These

If you plan to create social networking applications for your website users, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide access to your legal pages …

(Apps that interface with social networking sites also require compliance)

• 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 assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or using Google AdWords pay-per-click ads 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 - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
• If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

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

What Compliance Pages Does My Website Need To Be Protected From Legal Compliance Issues?

If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep you out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues):

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

As well as the above, you may want to look into including any of these pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides content about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – This lets site users be aware that you will not receive any form of compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you may be compensated if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Review/Sample Copy – Explains to site users that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product you’re writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to users 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 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 Legal Pages Content To Your Website

Ideally, you should consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (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 web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website) so that users can access legal information from every page …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer here:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To Your Blog

Store-Bought Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

To learn more, visit this site:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

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

These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with 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 Website Legal Forms include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• 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 on your website 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 the pages to your server as described earlier.

Go here to learn more:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

As well as using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

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

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

Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear inside your main navigation menu …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)

Choose from several pre-written legal templates …

(WordPress 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

For more information about this WordPress plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over 20 customizable legal templates for your website …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – 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 of Service
• 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them 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 very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.

Go here for more info:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some form of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford a lawyer.

We want your site to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or a plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate basic 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 engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or offer online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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, 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 of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

References And Legal Resources

Below is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to stay 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
• BBB – 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
• United States 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 you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple resources and WordPress plugins.

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