Tag: Privacy Statement

One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if having a digital presence is an important part of your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws affect various business categories, including:

• Any type of advertising, like Google AdSense
• 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 of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in a number of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.

This guide explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your website using simple and cost-effective legal resources and WordPress plugins.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. As stated above, the purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations governing online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you advertise on your website or blog

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Consider what the implications to your business would be if any of the following situations were to take place:

• A user suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone skin rashes.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you plan to do with their details.
• Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website making your site users aware that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and will get paid a financial benefit if they buy it.
• You did not spell out the terms of your refund policies.
• Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are misleading and decide to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy in a product review.
• Your website contains adult-related content and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider also these real 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 (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to give everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it 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 randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 entirely to the Google program with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could be exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords User
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business stays fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies

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

You are expected to let your site users know that your business complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will interact with.

Here are just some examples:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue with your WordPress site with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to 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 in their network …

(Policy requirements for vendors selling through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to 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 interests by making sure that your site complies with FTC regulations.

Various business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See the additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you plan to create apps that will integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to various legal pages …

(Social networking apps also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products online via affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or driving visitors to your site with 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 to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve ever wondered if “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, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

What Compliance Information Should You Add To Your Site To Be Compliant?

If your website falls short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following legal pages to your website should keep your business out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and external service providers, and avoid potential legal issues):

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

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

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides financial information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (if you provide users with access to media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – Lets your visitors be aware that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to visitors that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Lets readers know that you have been compensated in some way to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets readers 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Uploading Legal Pages To Your Website

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 them for you.

We recommend creating a legals folder in your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your website or blog) so that users have access to the information from all your pages …

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

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer using widgets, refer to this tutorial:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Website

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)

Go here to learn more:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to purchase a set of website legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & 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 simple search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new WordPress page 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 web server as described previously.

More info:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms

Legal Pages – Plugins

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

Here are some WordPress plugins you should check out:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

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

This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you time.

Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When the user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your main WordPress dashboard area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)

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)

You can also choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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 this powerful plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

total website compliance and disclaimer solution …

Go here to learn more:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin

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 Service
• 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 one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.

Go here for more info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire a legal expert.

We want your website to be legally safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

***

As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website stays compliant with all legal requirements and the guidelines and terms of service required by third-party sites that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your website must comply with a whole set of regulations, some of which you may not 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice on this website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

References And Resources

Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• 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 – 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
• US 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 site.

***