Tag: Legal Pages

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

As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s important that you try to stay on top of what’s going on and ensure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence plays an important role in your business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws affect several online business activities, including:

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

If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in a range of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.

If your web presence is not in compliance, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website are required to comply with legal requirements according to laws that govern business practices online, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you may be endorsing online, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress that can help your websites become compliant, such as the tools listed further below.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you promote

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Consider for a minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A user has a cardiac arrest after using your online workout program.
• The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer 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 spelled out exactly what you’ll do with their details.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting your visitors know that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and could derive financial benefits if they decide to purchase through your link.
• You didn’t spell out the conditions of your refund or return policies.
• A visitor claims your testimonials are fake and tries to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website contains adult-related information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.

Consider too the following 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 their personal information (including credit card info to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he was also ordered 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 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 entirely to the Google program with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming exposed to litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

It’s vitally important to ensure that your online business remains legally compliant.

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

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

You must let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you do business with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your sites using Google AdSense display advertising …

(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 via merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their network …

(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation 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 is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines.

You can find many 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 to a number of these at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to develop apps for your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to various legal pages …

(Social networking apps also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

Essential Legal Pages To Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If you suspect that your web site is lacking in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site should help you stay out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and external providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the following pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general health or medical advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Lets visitors be aware that you will not be receiving any form of payment for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets visitors be aware that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample Or review Copy – Informs your visitors that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets site users know that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors 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.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site

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

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, 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 directory via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website

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

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

If you need help adding links to pages on your WordPress sidebar, see this tutorial:

• How To Configure Widgets On Your Blog Sidebar

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more details, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to download a package of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines brought into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• 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 for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your server as described previously.

Go here for more info:

• Website Legal Pages

Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using cut & paste templates, you can keep things really simple by using a plugin.

Here are some great legal WordPress plugins that you may be interested in checking out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages)

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

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

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

• Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will 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 every other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when the user agrees to your legal terms.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear inside your main dashboard menu section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

You have the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, niche websites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)

Select from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Built-In 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 the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …

For a detailed review of this plugin go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(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 & 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 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. 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 websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford a lawyer.

We want your business to be protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documentation, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site is compliant with government legal requirements and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or using online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.

Additional Resources

Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:

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

We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog.

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