Tag: Make WordPress Site Legally Compliant

Is your WordPress site legal? Do you know if you are breaking any rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you advertise or recommend?

Internet laws were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t protect someone from taking legal action against you.

Recent 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 must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

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

• Any kind of advertising, e.g. text link ads, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If you do not include certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in various advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

Additionally, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.

The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website(s) are subject to certain legal requirements according to laws that govern online businesses, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be endorsing online, and that there are solutions that can help your sites become fully compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Is Your Website Breaking The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. You must carry out 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.

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider for one moment what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link 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 will do with their personal details.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website letting visitors know that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate that you will get paid a financial benefit if they decide to purchase using your link.
• You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund policies.
• Visitors claim your testimonials are false and try to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy in your product review.
• Your website contains adult-related content and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider also the following real examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information (including credit card info to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least 2 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 entirely to the Google program whose policies 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:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant.

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

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

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your business complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you engage with online.

For example:

Google requires you to display certain information if using many of their services and features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue with your online properties with Google AdSense online advertising …

(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your business using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell digital products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)

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

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been 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 money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your site is compliant with FTC regulations.

You can find many online resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the 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 Applications Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to create applications that integrate with your website, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide access to your 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 websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then 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, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, 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 to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you have ever wondered 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 services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site will help keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and 3rd-party providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to look into adding one or more of the pages listed below if applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides information about financial areas or income opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding correct web content disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets visitors be aware that you will not receive for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Informs readers that you will benefit financially if they buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Review/Sample Copy – Explains to your visitors that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs readers that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors 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 Compliance Pages To Your Site

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

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website

If someone prepares the legal content 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 adding a legal directory to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)

You can then add a link to your legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add these to your WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your site) so that visitors have access to the information from all your pages …

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

To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu and footer in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• Adding Widgets To Your Sidebar

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)

Go here for more information:

• FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission regulations brought into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

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 your legal pages to your web server as described previously.

More info:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Legal Pages – Plugins

As well as using copy & paste templates, you can keep things very simple using WordPress plugins.

Here are some legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Legal Pages)

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

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you time.

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

• Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When the user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your main navigation section …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)

Select from several pre-configured legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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

For more details about using this WordPress plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites with over twenty customizable compliance pages for your website …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Website 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 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. Your legal pages can be 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 sites.

Go here for more details:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some kind of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a legal firm.

We want your website to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, 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 any guidelines and terms of service provided by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole range of laws and regulatory guidelines, 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.

Resources

Here is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its 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
• 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 …

• Google 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
• 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 legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website using inexpensive legal resources and solutions.

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