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Is Your Australian Website Breaking The Law?

There are legal requirements in Australia that your website must adhere to.

Is your site legit or or flying the jolly roger?

Website legals and regulations are usually defined by a country’s governmental Information Commisioner’s office.

For Australia that office is the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

It basically outlines how you should handle personal data collection and storage and how that should be communicated to people your business interacts with online (I’m not a lawyer).

What Legals Does My Website Need?

Let’s keep this short and sweet.

  • Do you have one or more contact forms on your website?
    You are collecting data – your website needs a Privacy Policy.
  • Do you sell stuff on your website?
    You need to comply with Australian consumer law – your website needs a Terms & Conditions page.
  • Do you publish information or advice on your website?
    That could land you into liability claims – your website needs a Disclaimer page.
  • Do you allow people to leave comments on your blog posts?
    You could be sued for violating anti-discrimination laws, be culpable for spreading hate or inciting violence and more – your website needs a Comment Policy page.

Those are the basics which time and time again I see missing from websites.

Will you get a visit or a fine from the OAIC?

Maybe, maybe not but best not to leave that to chance.

Get those pages up on your website.

It’s always best to get a lawyer to write legal documents, and these pages are legal documents.

If you don’t have access to or can’t afford a lawyer you can purchase templates from the Lawpath website to get you started.

Note: if you deal directly with European countries you’re probably going to need to comply with GDPR as well using WordPress Privacy Tools.

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