Tag: Privacy Statement

One of the worst things that can happen to you as a business owner is to break the law.

Internet laws are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes goods and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for material gain, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the 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.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws affect several online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, including text link advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

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

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

In this article, we discuss why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and list simple and cost-effective resources and solutions that will make your WordPress website compliant.

Does Your Website Comply With The Law?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. As stated previously, 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 governing online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you recommend on your website

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if any of the scenarios below were to occur:

• A user suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone skin rashes.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement that lets subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you plan to do with it.
• Someone copies content from your site and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website making your site visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you are recommending that you could get paid a commission if they purchase via your link.
• You have not spelled out the conditions of your return policies.
• Online visitors claim your testimonials are all fake and decide to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site includes adult-related information and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider also these 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 to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk being a target of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

You need to ensure that your website or blog complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Big companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you engage with online.

For example:

Google requires your site to display certain information when using their products or features. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue with your online properties using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information products with places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for digital product sellers)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially if you plan to sell or promote products online using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies 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 still 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 website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with FTC regulations and guidelines.

A number of business resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you plan to create apps for your website users, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to your legal pages …

(Apps that integrate with social networks also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need 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 whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

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

If you suspect that your web site falls short in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site will help keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and external providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

As well as the above, you may want to consider including one or more of these pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides health or medical information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding correct disclosure information to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets your visitors be aware that you are not being paid for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Notifies readers that you will be compensated if they buy through your affiliate link.
• Review/Sample Copy – Informs your readers that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets users be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets readers 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Website

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

Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend adding a legals folder to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder via FTP …

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

You can then add a link to these pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add these to the sidebar (or the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from all of your pages …

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

For a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar menu or footer in WordPress using widgets, see this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Use Widgets

Store-Bought Legal Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting websites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)

Go here for more details:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to purchase a package of legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages)

These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC regulations that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use: includes inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

You can either create a new page for each 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 described earlier.

More information:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

In addition to using templates, another option is to use plugins.

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

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If the idea of creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you time.

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

• Pre-written 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 the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. 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 lockdown. When the user agrees to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

You can create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)

You can also choose from several built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 the benefits of using this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users containing over 20 customizable compliance templates for your digital business …

Go here to learn more:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 – 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 powered site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

Go here for more information:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some form of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire the services of a lawyer.

We want your site to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal page templates, or a legal pages plugin 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 Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for third-party products and services that you may be promoting or advertising online. If your website doesn’t comply 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.

Resources

Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to stay 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 Website
• 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 …

• 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 compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website or blog.

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