Tag: Legal Pages

Is your WordPress site 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 selling or endorsing?

As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s vital that you try to stay informed about what’s going on and ensure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your web presence is important in the success of your business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau)

These laws affect various business categories, including:

• Any type of advertising, like Google AdWords
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Bloggers
• etc.

Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a range of advertising or online merchant networks.

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

The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website or blog may be subject to legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be endorsing on your site, and that there are easy solutions that can help your website become fully compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.

Is Your Site Breaking The Law?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever you do business.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A user suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives someone an adverse reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you will do with their details.
• Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own site.
• There is no statement on your site making your site visitors aware that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate that you may get paid a sales commission if visitors buy it.
• You have not spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
• A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are misleading and decides to sue you as a result.
• You didn’t disclose that you received a free copy of a product in your review.
• Your site publishes adult-related information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.

Consider too these real examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card details to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he is now required to issue a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with 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 does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA or PPA Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdWords User
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

It’s imperative to ensure that your digital presence remains fully compliant with the law.

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

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

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

For example:

Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their products. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue with your blogs using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

Or promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell digital products using places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements product vendors using ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially if you plan to sell or promote products or services online using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this often prompts 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 plan to do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business by making sure that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations.

There are many resources sites for businesses that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the additional references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(It’s important to 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 apps that will integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to various legal pages …

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, 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 provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and 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 policies and guidelines)

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

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

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

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

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

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides health or medical advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms (if you provide users with access to media 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 – Informs your readers that you’re not being paid for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets visitors be aware that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to readers that you have received a review or sample copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
• 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Website

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares 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 HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar menu (or the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from every page …

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

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

• Adding And Configuring Widgets On The Sidebar Section

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more details, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

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

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.

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

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

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

Go here for more information:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – Plugins

In addition to using templates, you can simplify things by using a plugin.

Here are some plugins for WordPress users you may be interested in using:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium 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 reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to the legal terms, the page unlocks.
• 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 dashboard menu section …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page type menu)

Choose from a number of pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress 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 the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin website:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress websites containing over 20 customizable legal pages for your website …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(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 license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.

To learn more, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some type of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a legal firm.

We want your business to be protected!

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 plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, 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, it’s important that your site stays compliant with all legal requirements and the terms of service and guidelines provided by 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website isn’t compliant 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide 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 fully complies with the law regarding your specific business.

Legal Information

Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website 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
• Better Business Bureau Website
• 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

In Addition …

• 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website or blog.

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