Nonprofit online privacy group, TRUSTe (www.etrust.org), announced that more than 30 Web sites have joined its program to help online publishers and marketers define industrywide privacy standards and increase consumer confidence in online transactions. TRUSTe provides these sites with a privacy statement letting consumers know how any information given will be used. Among the 30 sites are: America Online; American Eagle Outfitters; several Buena Vista Internet Group sites, including Disney.com, ABCNEWS.COM and ESPNSportsZone; nine CNET sites; Fleishman-Hillard; GeoCities; IBM; Infoseek; Lycos; Netcom; The New York Times; Yahoo; and WebCrawler. These sites have posted, or are in the process of posting the TRUSTe trustmark. Licensing fees for the trustmark will depend on the organization's revenue and will range from $249 to $4,999.
In other news, TRUSTe and the Internet Content Coalition (ICC), a nonprofit advocacy group for Internet content developers and distributors, announced an agreement that will promote TRUSTe to ICC members, including CBS, MSNBC, Playboy Enterprises, Sony Online Ventures and Time Inc.
