Tag: Website Legal Compliance

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

Online laws and regulations were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not prevent someone from taking legal action against your business.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for commercial gain, then you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also called the 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 – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

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

• Any type of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords or AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in various advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

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

In this article, we look at the importance of having a legally compliant website and provide simple and inexpensive resources and solutions to help make your website compliant.

Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws wherever your business operates in.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Consider for one moment what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement that lets subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you’ll do with their personal details.
• Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their website.
• You haven’t advised your site users that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and will get paid an affiliate commission if visitors buy it.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are false and decides to sue you because of it.
• You didn’t disclose that you received a free copy in your product review.
• Your website includes adult information and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider now the actual case studies of costly compliance breaches below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it 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 chosen at random, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could be exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

it’s important to make sure that your website or blog is fully compliant with the law.

Complying With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

Leading online companies and government trade 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 all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display legal information if using their products. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue online with your online properties using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add various legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for sellers)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take 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 regulations.

A number of business resource sites provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources to some of these at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you plan to develop apps for your site users, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with access to various legal pages …

(Apps that integrate with social networks also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• 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, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

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

If your website or blog lacks in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help your business keep out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to consider implementing 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
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general health or medical content)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of content disclosure is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets users know that you are not being paid for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets site users be aware that you will be compensated if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
• Sample Or review Copy – Disclosure that informs readers that you have received a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets users know that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets your visitors know 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 To Your Site

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

Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Site

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage 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 creating a legal folder in your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …

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

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

(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 visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors will be able to access legal information from all pages …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu here:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPress

Using Ready-Made Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms

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

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects Federal Trade Commission 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 page on your website for each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.

Visit this website to learn more:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Plugins

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

Here are some legal WordPress plugins you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

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

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will make the work 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 benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to the 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 menu item is added to your dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

With WPLegal Pages, you can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, Amazon sites, etc …

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

Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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 this plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

total website compliance and disclaimer solution …

Learn We have written a detailed article about this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

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 powered site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

Go here for more details:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

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

We want your website to be safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service for 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or advertise online. Your digital presence must comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even 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 are not offering legal advice on our website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.

Legal Resources And References

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 legal obligations:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

Additionally …

• 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 and easily add legal pages to your website.

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