Tag: Privacy Statement

Is your WordPress site legal? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are endorsing or offering?

Internet laws and regulations were designed to protect 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 legal requirements won’t protect someone from taking legal action against you.

New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for material gain, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau Website)

These laws has ramifications for various business categories, including:

• Any kind of advertising, including Google AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not approve digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into most advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

In addition, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.

This guide explains the importance of having a compliant website and explains inexpensive methods to help make your WordPress website or blog legally compliant in minutes.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based in.

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A customer has a heart attack after they use your online workout program.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives someone an allergic reaction.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you will do with their personal details.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website letting your visitors know that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and may receive a sales commission if they buy it via your link.
• You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Someone claims your testimonials are fake and tries to sue you.
• You did not disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site publishes adult-related information and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.

Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card info 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 without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of at least three 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 violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could easily become exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords User
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

It’s imperative to make sure that your digital presence has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to all site users.

Complying With Third-Party Companies

Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.

You must let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you engage with.

For example:

Google requires you to display legal information if using many of their services and product features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue online with your WordPress site using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

Or promoting your services using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell information products using companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add certain legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale in their network …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)

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

(FTC – consumer policies 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 business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

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

A number of business resources provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to resources to some of these at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you plan to create apps for your website users, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether or not 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 are considering promoting products or services online via affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

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

Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance

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

Adding the following compliance pages to your website should help your business keep out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):

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

As well as the pages above, you may want to consider including any of the following pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general money-making advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs site users that you will not receive any kind of compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets site users be aware that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets users be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets site users know that you were compensated in some form to write the post.
• 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you should consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Website

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 these pages for you.

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

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

You can then easily add links to these legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors can access the information from all your pages …

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

If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To The Blog

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

To learn more, go here:

• Find Legal Forms – Legal forms

Another option is to download a package of cut & paste legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s 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 business details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new Federal Trade Commission regulations brought into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page on your website 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.

To learn more, visit this website:

• Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using templates, you can keep things very simple by using WordPress plugins.

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

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

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

This plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium 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 the WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When a user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your main dashboard menu …

(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page type drop down menu)

Select from several built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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

For more details about using this powerful plugin, visit this site:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

total website compliance & disclaimer solution …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 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. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.

Go here for more details:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your business to be legally protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal documents, or a WordPress plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to easily generate necessary 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 do any type of business online, it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service for 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or offering online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Legal Resources And References

Here is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to comply and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC 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 – Better Business Bureau
• 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

And …

• 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

We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

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