Can You Trust TRUSTe?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Can-You-Trust-TRUSTe/?kc=EWKNLSTE032508FEA1

Would you think that a program that hides misleadingly named entries  
in inappropriate areas of the registry is trustworthy? Me neither, but  
TRUSTe does.
TRUSTe is a nonprofit organization set up to help Internet users  
determine who is worthy of their trust, in commerce or other areas on  
the Web. The company sells a number of seals that you might see when  
interacting with Web sites. These seals are meant to show that the  
site adheres to TRUSTe's standards for Web privacy, e-mail privacy and  
other such concerns.

TRUSTe has long had a reputation for not aggressively enforcing its  
own standards. Its business model, even as a nonprofit, created a  
conflict of interest in that it gets its income from the companies it  
is certifying.

A recent episode shows that the problems continue. Back in August, Ben  
Edelman (now a professor at Harvard Business School) reported on  
misleading and undesirable behaviors in the PC software used by  
Coupons Inc. As Edelman noted, Coupons’ software allows you to print  
out coupons that you may bring to normal brick-and-mortar retailers,  
but they were requiring that the printing be done through custom  
software that included an ActiveX control.

Edelman also noted that the software was using files and registry  
entries with names that were misleading and that were stored in  
improper locations, such as the \windows directory. Many appeared to  
be named to give an observer the idea they were part of Windows. Some  
of them were not removed after the uninstaller was run.

<snip>

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