Privacy seal

Over the Christmas holidays, I did quite a bit of shopping online. I don't know if it was the panic to fill out my gift list or just the holiday rush, but I gave out more information to sites than I normally would. And much like people who dread the onslaught of bills from their shopping sprees, I dread logging on each day to find my inbox filled to the brim with spam because of my weak moment.

An ounce of prevention could have saved me a whole lot of headache. All I would have had to do is look for the TRUSTe symbol to know whether a site had good privacy policies. And a recent check of my Internet shopping spree path showed that not one of the companies I bought from featured the TRUSTe seal of approval.

Much like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval guarantees a product's quality, the TRUSTe seal ensures that a site has well thought-out privacy policies.

Begun in 1996, TRUSTe is a nonprofit initiative started by Lori Fena of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Charles Jennings of Portland Software. They met while attending a lecture about trust on the Internet that was given by Esther Dyson at that year's PC Forum. TRUSTe was launched in 1997 and now boasts almost a thousand participants, including Yahoo, Deja Opinion eTrade and Disney.com. For the full list, visit www.truste.org/users/users_lookup.html.

The seal is given to sites that meet a list of criteria listed on the TRUSTe site. To be able to post the seal on its site, a company must agree to certain requirements. It must adopt and implement a privacy policy, post a notice of disclosure on the site about how information gathered from visitors will be used, give users consent and choice over how their information is used and shared, and have a way to safeguard and update user information.

A company can apply for the seal at the TRUSTe site. The company must prove that it has met all of the requirements and pay a fee based on its annual revenue. If the site passes muster with TRUSTe and its overseers, then it receives the "trustmark," a simple seal that, when clicked on, leads to the company's privacy statement posted on the TRUSTe site. Also, the site is subjected to spot checks of its privacy guarantees.

Looking for this seal is a simple guarantee that your personal information will not be shared without your consent. TRUSTe also has a special seal for sites that have met the stricter requirements of hosting children online. While the lack of a trustmark doesn't mean that a site has bad privacy policies, it does raise a red flag. Gaining a trustmark seems simple enough and I know I'll be looking for it from here on out.