Tag: Privacy Statement

Is your website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you use or endorse?

Online laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t prevent someone from taking legal action against your business.

New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for commercial gain, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau)

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

• Any kind of advertising, like inline ads, Google Adsense, etc.
• 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 and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into most advertising and online marketing networks.

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

This article explains the importance of having a compliant website and describes inexpensive methods that will help make your WordPress website or blog compliant quickly and easily.

Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As stated previously, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern business online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you use

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

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

• A user suffers a heart attack after using your online workout program.
• The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives people allergic reactions.
• You’ve informed your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you plan to do with their personal details.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog making visitors aware that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and could derive an affiliate commission if they purchase via your affiliate link.
• You didn’t spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Someone claims your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you because of it.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website includes adult-related information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.

Consider also these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape 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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach 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 cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how a website owner can easily be exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords User
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

It’s imperative to make sure that your online business stays legally compliant.

Complying With Third-Party Services

Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.

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

For example:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue with your blogs using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your business via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information products via merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your website before your products are approved for selling via their networks …

(Policy requirements for vendors selling through ClickBank)

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

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals 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 for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any 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 is compliant with FTC guidelines.

You can find many online business resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you are planning to develop social networking applications that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about your legal pages …

(Apps that integrate with social networks also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that 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 using Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Basic Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If your website falls short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help your website keep out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and external service providers, and avoid potential legal issues):

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

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

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

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – Informs users that you are not being paid for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets visitors know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Lets readers be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your Website

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

Uploading Legal Pages Manually

If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend adding a legal folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …

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

You can then add links to your legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu administration …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website) to ensure that visitors can access legal information from every web page …

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

To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar using widgets, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Add Widgets To Your WordPress Blog Sidebar Area

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• Find Legal Forms

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

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & 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 site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described previously.

Go here for more information:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using copy & paste templates, you can keep things very simple using WordPress plugins.

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

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If manually setting up legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages instead …

This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.

Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:

• Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any WP page.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information is then 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 WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks only when users agree to your legal terms.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature is added to your main WP dashboard area …

(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche sites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page type dropdown menu)

Select from various built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In 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 the benefits of using this plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites containing over 20 customizable compliance pages for your online business …

Go here to learn more about the plugin:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress 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 the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

Go here for more information:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of legal experts to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a solicitor.

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 ready-made legal page templates, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to easily generate essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you make money online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with all government regulations and any terms of service and guidelines provided by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or selling online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole range of regulations, many 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.

Additional Information

Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to comply 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
• 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

In Addition …

• 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

We hope this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog.

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