Tag: Privacy Statement

One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

Internet laws are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws has consequences for various online business categories, including:

• Any type of advertising, including PPC advertising
• 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 of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you will not be accepted into many advertising or online marketing networks.

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

The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website may be required to comply with legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you may be endorsing on your site, and that there are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.

Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As stated previously, the purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you promote

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider for one minute what could happen to your business if any of the following incidents were to take place:

• A person has a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users skin rashes.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you will do with their details.
• Someone steals content from your site and publishes it on their site.
• You did not tell visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you are promoting and may earn a financial benefit if visitors purchase it.
• You didn’t spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are false and decides to sue you as a result.
• You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website publishes adult information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider now the real case studies of costly compliance breaches described:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers took a risk 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 in violation of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 you could easily be exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdWords User
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

It’s vitally important to ensure that your digital presence remains fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

All the leading websites and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.

You must let your site visitors know that your website complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will interact with.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires you to display certain information if using their services or product features. This includes using services like Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your sites using Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

And even promoting your site through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell digital products using merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add a number of legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you display clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially when using product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.

You can find many resources sites for businesses that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources to a number of these at the end of this article …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to create applications that will integrate with your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others require you to provide information about various legal pages …

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything online using affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your website 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 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 protect yourself and your business.

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

What Legal Information Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Insured Against Legal Compliance Issues?

If you suspect that your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site should keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and third-party service providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to consider implementing any of the following pages:

• 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 content about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets your visitors know that you are not receiving any form of compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets users be aware that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample/Review Copy – Explains to your visitors that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Website

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

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Site

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.

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

(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add these to the sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors will be able to access the information from every web page …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer here:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To Your Website

Using Ready-Made Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms)

Go here for more information:

• FindLegalForms.com

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

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own 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
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

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 these to your web server as described earlier.

More information:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using legal templates, you can keep things really simple by using WordPress plugins.

Here are some great plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If manually setting up legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.

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

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WP page.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item is added to your main dashboard area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review sites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal page types)

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

(WP Legal Pages – 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 great plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …

For a detailed article about this plugin go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 of Use
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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 sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

Visit this site to learn more:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your website to be legally 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 page templates, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

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As stated earlier, if you do any kind of business online (or plan to), it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service for 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or using online. Your digital presence must comply with various laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not even 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 provide no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

Additional Information

Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your site may require 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
• 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• United States Copyright Office

See Also …

• 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 presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site using inexpensive legal resources and solutions.

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