From: "ama-gi ISPI" <offshore@email.msn.com> Subject: IP: ISPI Clips 5.25: TRUSTe Brings Privacy Home Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 00:30:34 -0700 To: <Undisclosed.Recipients@majordomo.pobox.com> ISPI Clips 5.25: TRUSTe Brings Privacy Home News & Info from the Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues (ISPI) Thursday October 8, 1998 ISPI4Privacy@ama-gi.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This From: WIRED News, October 7, 1998 http://www.wired.com TRUSTe Brings Privacy Home http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/15462.html by James Glave, james@wired.com 9:05 a.m. 7.Oct.98.PDT The major Web indexing firms have banded together with Web privacy group TRUSTe [ http://www.truste.org/ ] to launch a national advertising campaign aimed at educating consumers about online privacy issues. The campaign, known as Privacy Partnership, will rely on donated banner ads, distributed across the Net. Microsoft, for example, said it will donate 20 million banner impressions, or individual viewings, on its MSN.com service. Microsoft (MSFT) described Privacy Partnership as a "grassroots campaign," but there is nothing small-time about the lineup of Web content and indexing firms involved. Besides Redmond, AOL (AOL), Excite (XCIT), Infoseek (SEEK), Lycos (LCOS), Netscape (NSCP), Snap, and Yahoo (YHOO) are all on board. Lycos is the parent company of Wired Digital, owner of Wired News. The Internet advertisements, explaining the importance of protecting personal data online, will run between 12 and 31 October. All told, the companies will contribute more than 150 million online advertising impressions, worth more than US$3 million, in the form of banners and messages on their Web sites. The campaign is expected to reach about 90 percent of all Internet users in the United States. "Microsoft's commitment to online privacy is related to our ongoing vision of empowering the individual to do more through the PC," said Bob Herbold, Microsoft executive vice president and CEO, in a statement. The publicity push is designed to bring the Internet privacy debate home to middle America. The program will bring consumers into a conversation that has so far been a terse exchange between the Internet industry, which wants to regulate itself, and government, which is threatening to pass consumer-protection laws. "We want to be the first people to ask, 'Why doesn't government work with business and work with consumers?'" said a source with TRUSTe. The Federal Trade Commission has cracked down on the Internet industry for what it claims is a failure to respect personal information relative to consumers. In August, the commission punished GeoCities for allowing personal customer information to fall into untrustworthy hands. The FTC has given the industry until the end of this year to prove that it's serious about protecting consumer privacy. If that doesn't happen, it will recommend congress pass laws to do it for them. A recent survey [ http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/15428.html ] found that more than 40 countries have enacted, or plan to enact, consumer data-protection laws. TRUSTe is leading the charge to stop the United States from doing the same thing. The nonprofit industry group runs a program that awards a TRUSTe seal to Web sites that respect and preserve individual privacy. "The average citizen... [has] no idea they can't participate in self regulation," said the TRUSTe source. "If we don't do these things, then government will fail and self-regulation will fail. "In the privacy arena, what is really critical is that this is all moving really fast. The industry is collecting data faster than anyone can stop them. We want the government to put in the principles so that privacy doesn't become for the information age what the environment was to the industrial age." One Web-privacy advocate agreed, but said that a consumer-education campaign is a distraction that allows the big Internet companies to shirk their responsibilities. "Focusing on 'consumer education' is an attempt to shift responsibility back on the victim, which makes little sense when those people have so little technical and legal power to protect their own interests," said Jason Catlett, president of JunkBusters. "Detroit tried the same PR trick in the '60s, because telling people that they should drive more carefully was cheaper than being required to engineer safer cars and to take responsibility for the numbers of people that were getting killed," Catlett said. "How many more horror stories must we read before consumers will get more than 'You should have chosen better companies' for an answer?" Last week, the accounting firm of Ernst & Young told Wired News that it had signed on as a TRUSTe sponsor, and plans to work closely with the group to establish an e-commerce assurance program. Copyright © 1994-98 Wired Digital Inc. --------------------------------NOTICE:------------------------------ ISPI Clips are news & opinion articles on privacy issues from all points of view; they are clipped from local, national and international newspapers, journals and magazines, etc. Inclusion as an ISPI Clip does not necessarily reflect an endorsement of the content or opinion by ISPI. In compliance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed free without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ISPI Clips is a FREE e-mail service from the "Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues" (ISPI). 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