Press Releases
TRUSTe
Taps Mailshell to Expand Monitoring of Licensee
Privacy Practices
Mailshell.com
Becomes Professional Contributor to TRUSTe Privacy
Seal Program
SAN JOSE, April 3, 2001 - TRUSTe, the leading
privacy seal program, today announced that it has
partnered with Mailshell.com, the free service that
prevents junk email, to help TRUSTe in its ongoing
oversight of licensee privacy practices. By working
with Mailshell's commercial email management service,
TRUSTe will continue to monitor the adherence of
its licensees to posted privacy policies.
As part of its seal program's ongoing compliance
and oversight functions, TRUSTe continuously monitors
for adherence to privacy policies by anonymously
"seeding" the email marketing lists of its licensees.
TRUSTe will immediately begin to work with Mailshell's
commercial email management service to streamline
the seeding process, thereby more efficiently monitoring
licensees' commercial email practices, list rental
practices and compliance with unsubscription requests.
Using Mailshell's patent-pending technology, TRUSTe
will seed its licensee list with a unique and anonymous
email identity, enabling TRUSTe to monitor each
list's activity individually, without revealing
its identity to the licensee unless it chooses to
do so. TRUSTe will be able to determine if any licensees
resell or market their email lists without users'
permission or in violation of stated privacy policies.
"When it comes to commercial email, consumers
should feel assured that when a Web site posts the
TRUSTe seal, it will keep to the policies articulated
in its privacy statement," said Bob Lewin, President
and CEO of TRUSTe. "We selected Mailshell to help
us in our oversight because its technology provides
the most comprehensive technical solution to junk
email and spam."
Through the partnership, TRUSTe will leverage
Mailshell's core technology, which integrates a
comprehensive database of more than 100,000 unique
commercial email senders with recipients' email
client, providing the first intelligent 'Caller
ID' for commercial email. Mailshell's functionality
will enable TRUSTe to easily calculate the frequency
of each mailing, maintain an automated archive of
all emails sent by each licensee and monitor compliance
with unsubscribe requests. By using unique, fully
functioning email addresses for each list, TRUSTe
can also forward or reply to any email received
via this program.
"Giving out your email address can be risky,"
said Tonny Yu, CEO of Mailshell. "Anyone who has
your email address can email you anything that they
want at any time and for any reason. You forfeit
some of your privacy when you give out your email
address to sign-up, opt-in, register, subscribe,
personalize or buy."
"Our system will now enable TRUSTe to understand
more about the source and content of each email
than ever before," added Yu. "Mailshell's Caller
ID for email manages, monitors and hierarchically
sorts and delivers email, ensuring greater privacy
and control for email recipients, allowing them
to permanently cancel any undesired email relationship
at any time."
About TRUSTe
TRUSTe, the leading privacy seal program, is an
independent organization dedicated to building consumer
trust and confidence in the Internet. The TRUSTe
coalition of participating companies includes America
Online, Excite@Home, Intel, Intuit and Microsoft.
Founded in 1997, TRUSTe is the premier privacy
seal program worldwide. The TRUSTe seal is currently
displayed on all of the Internet's portal sites
and has been rated by Cheskin Research as the most
trust-invoking seal online. Since the summer of
1999, Nielsen//NetRatings has continuously rated
TRUSTe as the most visible symbol on the Internet.
Today, the TRUSTe maintains the largest privacy
seal program with nearly 2,000 Web sites certified
throughout the world.
TRUSTe is based in San Jose, CA, with an office
in Washington, DC. To learn more about protecting
your privacy online, visit the TRUSTe Web site at
http://www.truste.org.
About Mailshell
Mailshell's patent pending technology (http://www.mailshell.com),
which was recently cited by The Wall Street Journal
as among "the best ways to organize your email"
and "the best ways to stop spam", acts as an email
address escrow service to prevent junk email. Mailshell
users can find and subscribe to more than 100,000
free services, easily manage commercial email and
take control of unsolicited email and spam. Mailshell
allows users to subscribe safely by providing reviews
and samples of the best email lists so that people
are properly informed before they give out their
email address, protect privacy via a series of transparent
and private email addresses - 'mail shells' - that
only reveal what the user explicitly has given permission
to reveal and take control via Mailshell's advanced
filtering technology allowing users to instantly
and permanently stop any email they do not want.
In an effort to promote a sustainable infrastructure
for commercial email, Mailshell created and advocates
ten 'mailrights' designed to balance the needs of
email users and marketers. For more information
see http://mailrights.mailshell.com
Mailshell was founded in January of 1999 and is
based in Santa Clara, CA. Mailshell is a proud member
of TRUSTe.
# # #
Contact:
Stefan Pollack, Mailshell, (310) 556-4443, press@stefan.mailshell.com
