Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you are offering or recommending?
Online laws are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of new laws affect various online business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, like Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your site may be subject to certain legal requirements according to laws that govern business practices online, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you may be recommending online, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress that can help your online properties become more compliant, such as the tools listed further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing business online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose services or products you recommend
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what would happen to your business if these scenarios were to take place:
- A user has a heart attack after they use your online workout program.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives people allergic reactions.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you’ll do with it.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own site.
- You haven’t informed your site users that you are an affiliate for the product you are recommending that you may derive an affiliate commission if visitors purchase it.
- You don’t spell out the terms of your return policies.
- Someone claims the testimonials on your site are misleading and decides to sue you.
- You have not disclosed that you received a free copy in a product review.
- Your website includes adult-related information and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.
Consider now the real examples of costly compliance breaches described:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to issue a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- 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 using software that scrapes UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had broken 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 to the Google program whose policies they had violated, 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 through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords User
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
it’s important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Big companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You are expected to let your visitors know that your business complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will engage with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires you to display legal information when using their services and product features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your blogs with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
Or promoting your business via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell digital products through companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your website before your products are approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many business resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance
If you are planning to develop apps that will integrate with your site, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether or not you are 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 plan to promote anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If your website is lacking in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site will help your website stay out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to look into adding any of the following pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides financial content)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the correct types of disclosure pages to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you will derive some form of financial or similar kind of benefit if they purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets readers know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets users be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
- 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal folder in your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Pages On Your Site
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your site) to ensure that users have access to the information from all pages …
(It’s important to display links to your legal information on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer using widgets here:
Using Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
More info:
Alternatively, you can download a package of cut and paste website legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(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 search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (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 pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.
To learn more, visit this site:
WordPress Legal Plugins
As well as using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use plugins.
Here are some great legal WordPress plugins you may be interested in checking out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages plugin:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will then 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 other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When the user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item is added to your main WP dashboard section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review sites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)
Choose from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages – 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 the plugin website for more information about using this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)
Legal Suite Pro 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 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. 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 sites.
For more information, go here:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your website to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do business online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or endorse online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 in your country or region.
Legal Resources
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your website may require to comply 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
- 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
And …
- 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
- 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 provided above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress site.
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