Is your website legal? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you are endorsing or using?
As the digital way of life continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if having a digital presence is an important factor in your overall business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (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)
These laws has ramifications for various online business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, including Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook will reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of advertising or online marketing networks.
If you are not compliant, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website or blog may be subject to certain legal requirements according to laws that govern online business practices, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be selling on your site, and that there are solutions that can help your websites become compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. As stated above, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose services or products you advertise
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what would happen to your business if any of these situations were to take place:
- A customer has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you will do with their details.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you are an affiliate for the product you’re marketing and could derive a commission if they end up buying through your link.
- You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund and return policies.
- Your visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you.
- You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site includes adult content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider now the documented examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to issue everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer received 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 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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 with warnings or lose access entirely 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 become exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
it’s important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are expected to let your site users know that your website complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will interact with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using many of their services. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue with your site with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your services or products via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell digital products with places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies for breaches of regulation 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 chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your site complies with all FTC guidelines.
Many resources online provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the additional references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance
If you are planning to develop applications for your site users, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others will require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything on your site via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you have been wondering if “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 terms of use)
What Legal Information Pages Do I Need To Add To My Website To Be Protected From Legal Compliance Issues?
If you suspect that your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following legal pages to your website will help you keep out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to look into implementing any of the following pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general information about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the correct type of web content disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs site users that you are not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they buy through your affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets your readers know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Lets site users know that you have been compensated in some way to write the post.
- 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you should consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in standard web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or 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 users on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms)
More info:
Another option is to purchase a set of cut & paste legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.
More info:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages
(WP Legal Pages Plugin)
If manually creating legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you loads of headaches.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other page on your site.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks when the user agrees to your legal terms.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature is added to your WordPress dashboard menu …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page type menu)
You can also choose from various built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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
Visit the plugin site to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
For a detailed article about this plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
Legal Suite Pro 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 And Conditions
- 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 site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).
Go here for more details:
If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire the services of a legal form or lawyer.
We want your site to be legally protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal forms, or a plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator lets you easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you make money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service required by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or endorse online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole range 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
Additional Information
Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to remain compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:
- Federal Trade Commission 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
- 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
- US Copyright Office
See Also …
- 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your site.
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