Press Releases

TRUSTe Taps Mailshell to Expand Monitoring of Licensee Privacy Practices

Mailshell.com Becomes Professional Contributor to TRUSTe Privacy Seal Program

SAN JOSE, CA - 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.

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