Tag: Website Legal Compliance

Is your WordPress website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you do business with?

As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). 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 – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

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

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

If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you won’t be accepted into a range of advertising or online marketing networks.

If your website is not compliant, you could end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

This article explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and provides inexpensive ways that will make your site compliant quickly and easily.

Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As stated earlier, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you promote on your website

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

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

• Someone has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate gives someone allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not defined what you’ll do with their details.
• Someone copies content from your site and puts it up on their site.
• There is no statement on your website letting your visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re selling that you may receive a sales commission if they buy it using your affiliate link.
• You have not spelled out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are fake and tries to sue you as a result.
• You did not disclose that you received a free copy in your product review.
• Your site includes adult-related information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

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

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $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 does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent 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 breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 notices or lose access to the Google program they had violated, 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 non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

You need to make sure that your digital presence has the right legal pages and information accessible to all you site users.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

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

You must let your site visitors know that your business 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 most cases by most companies you will interact with.

For example:

Google requires websites to display certain information when using their products and features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue online with your WordPress blogs with Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

And even promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell products online using merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add certain legal pages before your products are approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling digital products via ClickBank)

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

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically 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 type of money-making activity 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 interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with FTC regulations.

Many business resource sites provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

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

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or use 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 their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and 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 terms of use)

Essential Legal Pages To Add To Your Website

If your web site lacks in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following legal pages to your website will keep you out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and avoid potential legal issues):

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

In addition to the above, you may want to look into including one or more of the pages listed below if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general health or medical information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the correct type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets visitors know that you will not receive any kind of compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your readers be aware that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets visitors be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Lets visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Website

Ideally, you should consult your lawyer 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 Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal content for you in standard web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

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

(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

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

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your WP sidebar or footer using widgets here:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In The Sidebar

Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More information:

• Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms

Another option is to download a package of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC guidelines 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 web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described previously.

More information:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Legal Page Plugins

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

Here are some plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If manually creating legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you many headaches.

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

• Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any WP page.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When a user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item is added to your WP dashboard area …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)

You can easily create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site menu)

Select from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WordPress 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

To learn more about using this plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users containing over 20 customizable legal templates for your web presence …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

Legal Suite Pro 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 & Conditions
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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 powered site. You can have legal pages 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 sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

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

We want your business to be safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documentation, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you are making money online, it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies and any terms of service and guidelines for 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, 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, we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Legal Resources

Below is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission 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
• US Copyright Office

Plus …

• 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 this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website using simple methods and resources.

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