Tag: Website Legal Compliance

One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your web presence plays a significant role in your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “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 various business categories, including:

• Any type of advertising, including inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed into many advertising or online marketing networks.

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

The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website(s) may be subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern business practices online, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you may be offering on your website, and that there are plugins for WordPress that can help your websites become fully compliant, such as the tools listed further below.

Is Your Website Breaking The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations governing your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you recommend

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider for one moment what the implications to your business would be if these scenarios were to happen:

• A customer has a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users allergic reactions.
• 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’ll do with the information you’ve collected.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting your site users know that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and will receive a commission if they purchase via your affiliate link.
• You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund policies.
• Your visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are misleading and decide to sue you.
• You did not disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site contains adult-related content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.

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

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction 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 private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had infringed 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 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 with warnings or lose access to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk being a target of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

it’s important to ensure that your online business stays legally compliant.

Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies

Big companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.

You are required to let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will interact with.

For example:

Google requires your site to display legal information when using many of their products and features. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your WordPress sites using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

And even promoting your services through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

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

(ClickBank – policy requirements for digital product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, 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 plan to 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. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.

You can find many resources online that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide a number of references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …

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

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

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

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether or not you are 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 plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.

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

What Compliance Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Legally Compliant?

If your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should keep you out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues):

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

In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into adding any of the pages listed below where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets readers know that you will not receive any form of compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors be aware that you may be compensated if they purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets your readers be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to your visitors that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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 consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, 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) …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your site) so that visitors have access to the information from every web page …

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

To learn more about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To Your Sidebar

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

More info:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste 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 quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your legal web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC guidelines that came into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

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

For more details, go here:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, you can simplify things using WordPress plugins.

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

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 choosing WordPress Legal Pages …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a 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.

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

• Built-in Legal 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 your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and completely 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 every other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When a user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear inside your main WP dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

You have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate websites, medical sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

Choose from various built-in legal templates …

(WP 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

To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin website:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …

More info:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 Use
• 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them 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 one minute or less 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).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance from a legal expert.

We want your site 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 documents, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to easily generate essential 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 engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website is compliant with all government legal requirements and any terms of service and guidelines required by 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or advertising online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole set of regulations, some 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. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements regarding your specific business.

Legal Resources

Here is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission 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 – 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
• United States Copyright Office

Plus …

• 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site using inexpensive legal resources and WordPress plugins.

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