Tag: Website Legal Compliance

As a business owner, you do not want to find yourself breaking any laws, rules or regulations.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.

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

(Better Business Bureau Website)

The new laws has legal ramifications for various online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, including inline ads, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote many advertising or online marketing networks.

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

The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website or blog(s) are required to comply with certain legalities, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be using on your site, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress that can help your websites become more compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. As stated earlier, the purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations governing online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you advertise on your website

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider what could happen to your business if these scenarios were to occur:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness program.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate gives people an allergic reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you’ll do with it.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your site informing your site visitors that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and will get paid a sales commission if visitors buy it.
• You haven’t spelled out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
• Visitors claim your testimonials are misleading and decide to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose that you were given a free copy of a product you are reviewing.
• Your website includes adult information and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.

Consider now these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. 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 independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could be exposed to the risk of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

it’s important to ensure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With Third-Party Companies

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

You must let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you interact with.

For example:

Google requires websites to display certain information if using many of their products or features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your blog using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your products through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell products online using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(Policy requirements digital product vendors selling through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often 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 do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by making sure that your site is compliant with all FTC guidelines.

A number of resources online provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with 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)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you are planning to create applications for your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with information about your legal pages …

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

• If you are not sure whether or not you are 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 anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay 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 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, 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 services require you to comply with their terms of use)

Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Site

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

Adding the following legal pages to your website should help keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

As well as the above pages, you may want to look into including one or more of these compliance pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general health or medical content)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs site users that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Informs site users that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate link.
• Review/Sample Copy – Disclosure that informs users that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Informs your readers that you were compensated in some form to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors know 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

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

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually

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

We recommend adding a legals folder to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your web server using 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 fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from every web page …

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

To learn more about adding links to pages on your sidebar menu and footer in WordPress, see this tutorial:

• How To Use Widgets In WordPress

Using Store-Bought Legal Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

For more information, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can download a package of legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

These legal templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• ToS & Conditions of Use.

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

To learn more, visit this website:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things very simple by using a plugin.

Here are some legal WordPress plugins that you may be interested in checking out:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …

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

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

• Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your terms.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will be added to your navigation section …

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

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate sites, medical sites, etc …

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

You can also select from a number of pre-written legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – 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 this WordPress plugin, visit this website:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …

Learn We’ve written a detailed review of this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(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 Plugin 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 less than one minute and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some form of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.

We want your site to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal documents, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

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As stated earlier, if you make money online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with all government regulations and any guidelines and terms of service provided by third-party sites that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your digital presence must comply with numerous regulations, some 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your specific business.

Additional Resources

Below is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to comply and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• BBB – 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

In Addition …

• Google Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
• Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
• 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 you have found this article useful and that it 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 website or blog.

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