12 Facts About TRUSTe

TRUSTe provides software and services to help corporations update their privacy management processes so they comply with government laws and best practices.

In 2000, TRUSTe became the first organization to join the Safe Harbor framework of the US Department of Commerce and the European Union, and subsequently launched its EU Safe Harbor Seal Program.

In 2001, TRUSTe became a Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Safe Harbor organization for the Federal Trade Commission and thereafter launched its Children's Privacy Seal Program.

In 2008, TRUSTe changed its structure from a non-profit industry association to a venture-backed for-profit company, raising its first round of capital from Accel Partners.

In 2013, TRUSTe was approved by the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance as an official certification provider for the EU Self-Regulatory Programme for Online Behavioural Advertising.

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In 2016, in an effort to help companies prepare for the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, which extends the scope of the EU data protection law established in 1995 to all foreign companies processing data of EU residents, TRUSTe partnered with the International Association of Privacy Professionals to offer free compliance assessments of a company's privacy practices.

TrustArc's certification subsidiary, TRUSTe, provides privacy dispute resolution services, designed to help oversee consumer requests and complaints regarding the privacy practices of those companies participating in TRUSTe's program.

In January 2006, Harvard economics researcher Benjamin Edelman published a study showing that sites with TRUSTe certification were 50 percent more likely to violate privacy policies than uncertified sites.

Edelman reported that TRUSTe did not go far enough to punish seal holders that break their rules and was not prompt enough in revoking the seal on companies that violate privacy standards.

On November 17,2014, the Federal Trade Commission announced that TRUSTe had agreed to settle a complaint that it misrepresented to consumers its recertification program, and its status as a non-profit entity, against a $200,000 penalty.

The FTC complaint alleged that from 2006 to 2013, TRUSTe failed, in over 1000 instances, to conduct annual privacy checks on the companies it certified.

FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen issued a partial dissent to the FTC ruling, "because TRUSTe never misrepresented its corporate status, " and had informed clients of its for-profit status.