Regardless of the type of website or the content that is on your site, it is strongly recommended that you include a Website Disclaimer on your site.
Disclaimers are necessary to ensure that liability of your website is limited wherever possible. They are necessary as the company, business or website owner controlling the website may not always be able to ensure that the information provided is up to date or control how any information on the site is used or interpreted.
Other instances include articles or pieces posted to a website, which the site or owner may not necessarily agree with. To ensure that they are not liable for this type of information and to ensure any liability may be limited, there is need to provide a website disclaimer.
Finally, it is important for your site to include a disclaimer when a site makes reference to another site or provides any type of link to another website. Most websites fall into this category and in almost all of the situations where a link is provided to another site, it is highly unlikely that the site providing the link has control over or reviews the content of the referenced site. As a result, a website owner will not want to be held liable for unintended or unknown representations made by another site, which may be protected by a website disclaimer on their own site.
Website Disclaimers are good practice …
Generally it is always a good practice to have a website disclaimer so that a viewer of a website cannot make a claim against a site damages suffered in some way by relying on information posted on your site.
All sites require and should contain some type of disclaimer. The quality and strength of the disclaimer may vary but any website, irrespective of content or service being provided, should consider posting a disclaimer to protect the site and owner of the website.
Essentially disclaimers limit website owner liability for things such as defamation or other damage claims suffered as a result of relying on information that may not be accurate or may not be interpreted and relied on correctly. Irrespective of size or content of a website, the owners do not have full control of who views it, how they may interpret and in turn rely on that information.
Following this, it can be seen as essential to limit any claims that may be made against the site or owners, no matter how frivolous or unforeseen the claims may be.
Website disclaimers are an essential tool for all websites to protect owners, content and website and should be utilized broadly to manage risk on any and every website.
