Tech Bytes: TRUSTe Campaigning For Privacy Adherents

TRUSTe, the corporate consortium supporting a privacy code for Internet commerce, is trying to spark interest in its program through what it calls the TRUSTe Challenge.

It is organizing a petition drive to make examples of companies that do not disclose privacy protection policies on their Web sites. It hopes to encourage companies to license the TRUSTe "trust mark" by submitting to audits and becoming certified as complying with privacy guidelines.

The organization's sponsors include AT&T, International Business Machines, Microsoft, and Netscape. It has begun an advertising campaign with $1 million of space donated by Web publishers.

TRUSTe said it surveyed the 100 most popular Web sites and found 80% posted no personal privacy information. TRUSTe supporters call for self- regulatory steps to build customer trust.

"Merchants must rise to the challenge of giving consumers power over their own data," said on-line privacy advocate Esther Dyson, chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"The time to adopt a privacy policy is now," said TRUSTe executive director Susan Scott. "If the industry continues its wanton collection and dissemination of personally identifiable information without informed consent, we will have created an environment on the Internet that is not conducive to commerce. In the end we will all lose."