You can’t trust Truste

We Told You a Decade Ago Not to Trust Truste

We have been warning people about Truste for years. In fact, in 2011 we wrote an article about WOT (Web of Trust) criticizing their adoption of the pay-to-play methodology where you can get a badge of trust for your business or Web site as long as you pay for it.

For years business and software companies have paid to receive the Truste seal of trust. We warned our readers years ago that you cannot trust Truste.  And once again we were ahead of our time. Now it comes out that Truste have been fined by the FTC for violating users’ trust. We have written many times about some of the worst malware producers, Hotbar, FunWebProducts and other who proudly displayed Truste seals on their Web site tricking people into installing malware because, supposedly, the Truste seal meant visitors could trust the site and hence their products and services. Not so much. It turns out that Turste sold their badge of trust to almost anyone willing to pay for it. And that’s exactly what we said in this article we wrote in 2011.

OK we’re going back further than that – how about a decade ago and this article called Who Can You Truste. We warned people not to trust a site, a product or service just because that product, site or service displayed the Truste seal.

Now the truth comes out and we were right to warn you all a decade ago and several times since. We tell you what we believe even if no one else believes it – and most of the time it seems we are proven right.

Here’s an article which appeared today (November 18, 2014) in the New York Times Blog:

Daily Report: TRUSTe, Web Privacy Certifier, Is Penalized by F.T.C.

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday penalized TRUSTe, a company that certifies websites for compliance with various privacy standards, saying it had deceived consumers about its recertification program and allowed itself to be falsely portrayed as a nonprofit corporation, Edward Wyatt reports.

TRUSTe, whose formal name is True Ultimate Standards Everywhere Inc., will disgorge $200,000 in profits to the Treasury as part of a settlement for failing to annually recertify the privacy practices of companies in more than 1,000 instances while claiming on its website that it did so each year.

The TRUSTe symbol has become the equivalent of an Underwriters Laboratories safety seal or a Good Housekeeping seal of approval, signaling to consumers that a website follows privacy practices like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and the United States-European Union Safe Harbor Framework.

“TRUSTe promised to hold companies accountable for protecting consumer privacy, but it fell short of that pledge,” Edith Ramirez, the F.T.C.’s chairwoman, said in a statement. “Self-regulation plays an important role in helping to protect consumers. But when companies fail to live up to their promises to consumers, the F.T.C. will not hesitate to take action.”

Read the entire New York Times Blog article here