TrustE Launches Trusted Spammer Program

Posted by michael on Thursday January 31, 2002 @04:35AM from the trustno1 dept.

Silverhammer writes: "InfoWorld is reporting that such luminaries as TRUSTe, ePrivacy Group, MSN, and DoubleClick are getting together to develop a "trusted senders" program to certify "commercial email" and "elevate" it above ISPs' and end users' spam filters. Why, you ask? Because they believe it's actually our fear of fraud that's hurting their response rates. Apparently all that stuff about invasion of privacy and theft of resources is just a big misunderstanding..." The Infoworld story linked above has the best information about this seal program, but CNet has another story including a quote forecasting 1400 pieces of spam per person per day in five years. Update: 01/31 17:02 GMT by M : The FTC is announcing a crackdown on spam.

1 of 449 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:Truste is Irrelevant by CaptainSuperBoy · 2002-01-31 05:29 · Score: 5, Informative

This is completely correct. TrustE will certify that you have a privacy policy, that's about it. When RealNetworks spammed their users repeatedly, anti-spam groups reported to TrustE that Real was violating their own privacy policy. TrustE should have revoked Real's membership, but they did nothing.

Also, what does spam have to do with privacy? TrustE mostly concerns themselves with how companies use your information - but spammers don't have any information about you, only an e-mail address they harvested or bought!