Tag: Make WordPress Site Legally Compliant

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

Online laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

New 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, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau)

These laws affect various online business activities, including:

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

Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook will disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in a range of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

More importantly, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.

The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be recommending on your website, and that there are solutions that can help your online properties become more compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.

Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice about your website or business. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations in your country or region.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Consider for a minute what would happen to your business if these scenarios were to occur:

• A person suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you plan to do with their personal details.
• Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their website.
• You haven’t informed your site users that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you may derive a sales commission if visitors buy it.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your refund and return policies.
• Your visitors claim the testimonials on your site are misleading and decide to sue you because of it.
• You didn’t disclose that you received a free copy in your product review.
• Your website includes adult-related content and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.

Consider too the following documented examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• A social networking app developer copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ 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 gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 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 easy it is to risk becoming targeted for non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords User
• Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

it’s important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence stays legally compliant.

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

All of the big online companies and government agencies that regulate trade in many countries emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.

You must let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you do business with.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires websites to display certain information if using their services or product features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Monetizing your sites with Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

And even promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

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

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often 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 kind of money-making activity 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 website complies with FTC regulations.

There are many online resources that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide links to resources to a number of these at the end of this article …

(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

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

(Apps that integrate with social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you are 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 anything on your site via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads 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 all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

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

What Compliance Information Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Covered Against 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 site will help your business keep out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the above, you may want to consider including one or more of the pages listed below if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general financial advice)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms (if you provide users with access to download videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not be receiving any form of payment for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate link.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to users that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Website

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

Uploading Legal Pages Manually

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 these pages for you.

We recommend creating a legal folder on your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

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

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

For a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In The WordPress Sidebar Menu

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

Go here to learn more:

• FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms

Another option is to purchase a package of cut and paste website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• ToS & Conditions of Use.

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

More info:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

In addition to using templates, you can keep things very simple by using WordPress plugins.

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

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WP Legal Pages Plugin)

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

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you many headaches.

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

• Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by 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.
• Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When the user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
• New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.

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

(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

With WPLegal Pages, you can create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, AdSense sites, etc …

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

Choose from various built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – 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

Visit the plugin site for more details about the benefits of using this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites that contains over twenty customizable legal pages for your digital presence …

Learn more about the plugin here:

• Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(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 of Use
• 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 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 plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

For more information, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your website to be 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 attorney-written legal documentation, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with all government laws and regulations and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your website must comply with a whole range of regulations, many of which you may not even 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 cannot offer legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.

References And Resources

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

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC 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
• 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

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and cost-effective methods and resources.

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