Tag: Privacy Statement

Is your WordPress site legal? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you use or recommend?

Online laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t prevent someone from taking legal action against you.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws has legal consequences for several business activities, including:

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

Without certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in various advertising and affiliate marketing networks.

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

The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website(s) are required to comply with legal requirements according to laws that govern business practices online, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be recommending on your website, and that there are solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your websites become compliant, such as the tools that we list further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is only 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 business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party companies whose products or services you offer on your website

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

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

• A person has a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you will do with it.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you are selling and could receive a commission if they purchase it.
• You did not spell out the terms of your refund or return policies.
• Visitors claim your testimonials are fake and decide 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 site contains adult-related information and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider also the real case studies of costly compliance breaches listed below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’re now required to issue everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• 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 children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars 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% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming targeted for litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

You need to ensure that your website has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to all you site users.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies

Compliance with third-party companies terms and policies is important.

You are obligated to let your site users know that your business complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your online properties using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell products online with places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add various legal pages to your website before your products can be approved for selling via their marketplace …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

New 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 documented on their website, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type of business 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 making sure that your site complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.

There are many business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide a number of references at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These

If you are planning to create apps for your site users, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide information about your legal pages …

(Apps that interface with social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products online using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads 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 have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website

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

Adding the following legal pages to your website will help your website keep out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

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

In addition to the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of the following pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides advice about financial areas or income opportunities)
• 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 the correct type of disclosure is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets visitors know that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets visitors know that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets visitors know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets readers be aware that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Site

Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages 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 folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …

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

You can then add links to these pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

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

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

We have created a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu and footer in WordPress using widgets here:

• Adding WordPress Widgets To The Sidebar Section

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

To learn more, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

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

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal templates were written 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 add your own details, then pasted into your pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page for every legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described earlier.

More information:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages

Plugins – Legal Pages

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

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

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

WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you loads of headaches.

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

• Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you need in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other page on your website.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your WordPress 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 site.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when the user agrees to your terms.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

You have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)

Choose from various built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Pre-configured 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 – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin

total website compliance and disclaimer solution …

For more details go here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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 of Service
• 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers 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 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).

To learn more, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of lawyers to create your online 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 to hire a solicitor.

We want your site to be legally protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

***

As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by third-party sites that you may decide to promote or sell online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole range of laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

Legal Resources

Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to comply and meet its legal obligations:

• 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
• United States 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
• Google 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 legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and inexpensive legal resources and WordPress plugins.

***