Tag: Privacy Statement

If you plan to grow a successful business online, the last thing you want to do is to find yourself breaking laws, rules or regulations.

As the cybersphere continues growing at an overwhelming speed and the rules constantly change, it’s absolutely essential that you stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (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 – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws has legal implications for various online business categories, including:

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

If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a number of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.

This guide explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and explains inexpensive methods that will help make your WordPress website legally compliant quickly and easily.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on this website. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations wherever you do business.

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• A customer suffers a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you promote 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 have not described exactly what you plan to do with their details.
• Someone copies content from your site and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you are marketing a product as an affiliate that you will earn a financial benefit if they buy it.
• You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
• Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are misleading and tries to sue you.
• You did not disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website contains adult-related information and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider now the following documented examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $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 gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 notices or lose access 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 easy it is to risk becoming targeted for non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords User
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

It’s vitally important to ensure that your website remains legally compliant.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies

Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you will engage with.

For example:

Google requires your site to display legal information if using many of their services and product features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue online with your blog with Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your business through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell products online with companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for selling via their marketplace …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policies on your site, 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 how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business by making sure that your website complies with all FTC regulations.

Many business resource sites provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to resources to some of these at the end of this article …

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you are planning to create applications for your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether 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 anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, 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 - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you’ve been wondering if “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 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)

What Legal Information Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Compliant?

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

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and external providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues):

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

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

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general content about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you will not receive for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to users that you may benefit financially if they buy through your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Explains to your visitors that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing.
• Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Site

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

Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Site

If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.

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

(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages via FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar (or the footer section of your website or blog) so that users will be able to access the information from all of your pages …

(It’s important to display links to your legal pages on all of your site’s pages)

For a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer in WordPress using widgets, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Add Widgets To WordPress

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can download a set of website legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

These templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & 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 WordPress page 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 the pages to your web server as described earlier.

To learn more, go here:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using cut & paste templates, you can simplify things by using plugins.

Here are some WordPress plugins you should check out:

WP Legal Pages

(WP Legal Pages Plugin)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress 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 benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages:

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

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

Select from various pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress 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

Go here to learn more about using this powerful plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users that includes over 20 customizable legal templates for your site …

More info:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro 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 & Conditions
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro 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 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).

To learn more, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your site to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal forms, or a plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you are making money online, you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your website must comply with a whole set of regulations, many of which you may not even be aware of.

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, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on our website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Legal Resources

Here is a useful list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• 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
• US Copyright Office

Plus …

• 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website using simple legal resources and solutions.

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