Irrespective of the nature, the content, or any target audience of a website, a site owner has no control over who views and how they may rely on the information on the website.
Just like a website owners inability to know who may use their website, there may be instances where users may rely on the information in unforeseen ways. Following this, the website owner should try to limit their liability through their Website Disclaimer on their site.
Even though in almost all instances it is commercially desirable to have accurate information on your site, which is what most websites endeavor to do, there may be times when they are inaccurate, out of date or have views which are not common to others.
Other instances where content may be controversial or unreliable is when your website links to other sites, as the owner of the website that links to other websites has no control over or postings or articles in the other linked site and which may not reflect the opinion of their own site. These instances are clearly very broad and may apply to most websites.
Website Disclaimers mitigate risk
By including a website disclaimer on every website, irrespective of its nature, is an easy and often effective way to manage your website risk. This is a broad safeguard that will limit the liability of a website and its owners.
Every website contains information, and in most instances there is a specific intention for the information on the website. A disclaimer will help prevent a viewer suing the website and owner for any loss suffered from taking this information and interpreting it in the wrong way.
There are endless possibilities of how this can take place, for example, an article written on the nature and purpose of website disclaimers could not be interpreted as legal advice given by the website that the article is published on. In this example there is a clear intention of the article to outline the nature of a disclaimer but if a reader chose to interpret this as legal advice, acted upon it and subsequently suffered loss, the website publishing the article could not be held liable provided they had an effective website disclaimer.
This example outlines how information can be misinterpreted and relied on and secondly where a website would outline that views or expressions of an article writer are not those of the site, further safeguarding itself from misuse of the information through their website disclaimer.
