Tag: Privacy Statement

One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a business owner is to break the law.

Internet laws were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes products or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not prevent someone from taking legal action against your business.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for commercial gain, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also known as 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 – BBB)

The new laws has ramifications for various business categories, including:

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

If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you will not be accepted into a number of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.

If your digital presence is not compliant, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your site may be required to comply with legal requirements according to laws that govern your business, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be selling online, and that there are plugins for WordPress users that can help your online properties become compliant, such as the tools listed further below.

Is Your Site Legally Compliant?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you advertise on your website

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider what could happen to your business if any of the following were to happen:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• 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 the information you have collected.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website making your site visitors aware that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and will receive an affiliate commission if visitors purchase via your affiliate link.
• You have not spelled out the conditions of your refund and return policies.
• Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are false and decides to sue you because of it.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site publishes adult-related content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider now these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 to the Google program whose policies they had violated, 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 litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Product Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog is legally compliant.

Complying With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Leading online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.

You are expected to let your visitors know that your business complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you interact with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display legal information if using their services. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your online properties with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell products online through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add certain legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale in their marketplace …

(Policy requirements for vendors selling through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners 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 physically located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines.

Many sites provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references to a number of these at the end of this article …

(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you plan to create applications for your site users, 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 or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products online via affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or use Google AdWords 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 their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you’ve been wondering 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, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

What Compliance Information Pages Do I Need To Add To My Website To Be Legally Compliant?

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

Adding the following legal pages to your website should help keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and third-party providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues):

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

Additionally, you may want to look into including any of these pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides health or medical advice)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Lets your visitors be aware that you are not being paid for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through an affiliate link.
• Sample Or review Copy – Disclosure that informs site users that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to visitors that you were 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 satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you will consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload 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 server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website) so that users can access the information from every web page …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets here:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPress

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

To learn more, visit this website:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to purchase a set of legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates)

These legal pages were created by an attorney and 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 forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• 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 on your website for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.

More information:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

As well as using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress websites and blogs that you may be interested in using:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …

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

Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your legal terms.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear inside your main WP dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

With WP Legal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)

You can also choose from several pre-written legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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 this WordPress plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

total website compliance & disclaimer solution …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 – 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. Your legal pages can be 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 (even sites that you decide to sell).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then at least consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a legal form or lawyer.

We want your business to be protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal content, or a plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you quickly generate essential 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 engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or advertising online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.

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 offer no 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 is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.

References And Resources

Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to comply and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB
• 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

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website or blog.

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