Tag: Website Legal Compliance

As a website owner, the last thing you want is to find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

As the digital way of life continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important to try and stay on top of what’s going on and make sure that your site remains legal, especially if having a digital presence is an integral factor in your business strategy.

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

(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws has implications for various online business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, e.g. text link advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a range of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

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

This guide explains the importance of having a compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

Does Your Website Comply With The Law?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. As previously stated, 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 the laws and regulations governing business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you promote on your website or blog

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider for a minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A person has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users an adverse reaction.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement letting subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you will do with their personal details.
• Someone steals content from your site and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting your visitors know that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you could earn a commission if they buy it.
• You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
• Someone claims your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you because of it.
• You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy of a product in your review.
• Your site contains adult-related content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider also these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer copped 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 Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had broken 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 breaking 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 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 easy it is to be exposed to the risks of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

it’s important to ensure that your website or blog complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

All the big online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.

You must let your visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you engage with.

Here are just some examples:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Monetizing your WordPress blogs using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

Or promoting your services via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information products with places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add legal pages before they will approve your products for selling via their networks …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)

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

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners 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 chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your website complies with all FTC regulations.

Many online business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide a number of references at the end of this article …

(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you plan to develop apps for your site users, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others will require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Apps that interface with social networking sites 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 service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
• If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

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

What Legal Information Pages Do I Need To Add To My Website To Be Legally Compliant?

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

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will help keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external service providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above pages, you may want to look into including any of these pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general information about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you will not be receiving any type of payment for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets site users be aware that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets site users know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets site users 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Website

Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been 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 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 creating a legal folder on your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from every web page …

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

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

• How To Add Widgets To WordPress

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Go here for more info:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can download a set of legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• ToS & Conditions of Use: includes inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

You can either create a new page on your website 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 server as described earlier.

Go here for more details:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use plugins.

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

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages …

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

Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages:

• Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily 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 site.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your legal terms.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will be added to your navigation area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page type menu)

Select from a number of pre-written legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Pre-configured 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

Visit this site to learn more about using this useful plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

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

Learn more here:

• 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 And Conditions
• 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 powered site. You can have legal pages 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.

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your business to be protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal templates, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice on our website. 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 pertaining to your business.

Legal Resources

Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• 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
• 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
• US Copyright Office

In Addition …

• Google 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 you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

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