Melissa Pereira
Director of Corporate Communications | TRUSTe
@melissadpereira
Today we’re releasing our 2012 TRUSTe Transparency Report. It details how TRUSTe helps companies conduct business in a privacy-safe manner while also building trust, driving engagement and ensuring compliance. The report provides an overview of TRUSTe technology developments and privacy certifications over the past year. We also share the certification, enforcement and consumer dispute resolution processes, including a summary and analysis of the consumer privacy disputes processed in 2012.
Just as we help our clients bring transparency, accountability and user choice to their online products and services, TRUSTe is committed to doing the same by being transparent about our business, hence our annual release of the Transparency Report. It’s our way of fostering an understanding by all stakeholders of how the TRUSTe privacy certification programs, monitoring solutions and compliance controls are relevant wherever personal data is collected, shared or used across websites, mobile apps, advertising and cloud services.
The TRUSTe Certified Privacy Seal is the most visible footprint of our brand – displayed on more than 5,000 online properties in more than 30 countries. To receive the seal, clients must participate in a rigorous certification process that includes adhering to our stringent program requirements. We enforce our certifications through ongoing monitoring, consumer dispute resolution, and mandatory annual re-certifications. TRUSTe gives consumers the opportunity to have their complaints heard and privacy issues addressed. Consequently in 2012, we successfully resolved nearly 10,000 consumer complaints.
To recount our commitment to technological advancements, the report also highlights TRUSTe innovations in 2012. Some examples are expanding upon our monitoring products and compliance controls that leverage proprietary technology and our extensive expertise in privacy certification and compliance. Specific to monitoring, the TRUSTe Website Monitoring Service enables clients to identify all tracking activity that is occurring on their digital properties, both authorized and unauthorized parties. With regards to compliance controls, we introduced two new offerings: the TRUSTed Consent Manager and TRUSTed Mobile Ads. 11 of the leading mobile advertising networks have now adopted TRUSTed Mobile Ads as the mobile advertising privacy management solution which unifies consumer preferences across the web and mobile web. As the leading provider of the Ad Choices icon for online advertising, TRUSTe now serves tens of billions of privacy safe ads monthly, with our TRUSTed Ads solutions for online behavioral advertising.
To learn more, we encourage you to read through the 2012 TRUSTe Transparency Report.
