UK Website legal minima ...

Here are the legal minima for websites in the UK and France.

- If it is required on a company letterhead, it is required on your website (and emails). So: company name, registered address, registration number, VAT registration (if applicable): All required - not  on every page.

- Even if you only have a contact form but certainly if you collect any other information about a customer, you are obliged to comply with the 1998 Data Protection Act which includes informing customers how information will be used and whether and how it is shared with third parties.  You are additionally obliged to disclose whether you use any technical information about a customer (such as cookies). This is the single biggest area in which online marketeres fall foul of the law and it is a Google Requirement of using ADSENSE - for example - that a "Privacy Policy" exists on the site.

- Content theft is so very easy on the web - but it is still illegal (how many people don't seem to "get it"?).  Protect your content not only with a Copyright notice including the years in which it is in force, but where your content is proprietary and of distinct competitive advantage you should also take-out Copyscape protection.  I wrote a fuller article about content theft for Green Energy on their blog.

- Fake Consumer Reviews.  Illegal.

- "Bait and Switch" advertising - i.e. advertising one product but "switching" the actual product you end up offering the client (the most common excuse being "out of stock") is also illegal.

- Use of competitor trademarks in keyword-triggered ads: not yet illegal due to split decisions in previous court rulings on the matter, although recent US rulings have started to narrow the trend towards trademark owners.

About the Author: Richard Martin of Briquesetclics is a Certified Management Consultant and Accredited Internet Marketing Consultant of 20 years experience in IT. Briquesetclics offers exquisite eBusiness solutions, website design and Internet Marketing with English to French Translation to expat and French Comunities in Southwest France. He serves the Limousin, Poitou-Charentes and Aquitaine regions and the cities of Limoges, Poitiers, Bergerac, Perigueux, Angouleme, Cognac, Bordeaux, Niort.

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