The Trust Foundation Understanding trust issues in the digital era.

In response to the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003, Google made a change to its landing page by adding a “privacy” link for its visitors. The California Privacy Protection Act states that a commercial website that collects personal information must link to a privacy policy from the websites homepage.

I found this article on e-consultancy.com. The blog has a lot of resources for information on how to establish trust with clients as a consultant. The following blog post outlines 5 things that will enhance online customer trust and 5 things that will make customers skeptical of your online services or resources.

"Reports of online fraud are often enough to make customers think twice about shopping on the internet, so how can you reassure them?
There are a number of things that retailers can do to make customers feel safe about shopping online, as well as mistakes that can damage trust in an e-commerce website."

“Steve Clark had had enough. Weeks after spending $2,500 on a new bedroom set, the bed broke. Workers repaired the bed two months later. Then it broke again. For six months, Clark spent his days leaving frustrated messages with the shop and spent his nights worrying the mattress would crash to the floor. Eventually, one of the managers came to Clark's home in Yakima and successfully fixed the problem.”

“According to a national survey commissioned by the Better Business Bureau, furniture stores, auto dealerships, and cell phone and wireless companies are ranked as the most untrustworthy by consumers. Grocery stores and pharmacies earned the most trust.”

“Zan Deery, spokeswoman for the Better Business Bureau out of Spokane, said there are many factors that can explain the results, from bad experiences to national headlines. But what outweighs the complaints themselves is how businesses respond to them.” Customers can be easily frustrated when the companies they frequent do not respond to their concerns. Responding promptly to customer questions and distresses helps establish a caring and trustworthy relationship.

“Bill Jakob arrived in this small town with an offer to help police curb the community's methamphetamine problem. He had a badge and a gun and told officials he had previously worked as an anti-drug agent in Illinois. He even drove a fully equipped Ford Crown Victoria, which he said was for undercover work.”

“There was just one problem: Jakob was no cop. He was an unemployed truck driver with a criminal record and had recently filed for bankruptcy.Now this village of 1,200 people southwest of St. Louis is confronting allegations that Jakob and other officers mistreated and robbed many of the people they arrested.”

Dixie and Steven K Randock Sr., after three years of investigation, were finally caught and charged for producing degrees from made up universities. For a couple thousand dollars, this couple handed out seemingly-legitimate undergrad and masters degrees that required very little or no education. The Randcocks did not just produce the diplomas, but took steps to make sure the degrees looked as credible as possible. For example, they staffed an office of people who would pick up the phone when employers would call to verify the degrees. They also produced some fake degrees from legitimate universities; doing so became much easier as Universities began to offer online classes and degrees.

“Monroe was one of more than 120 fictitious universities operated by Dixie and Steven K. Randock Sr., a couple from Colbert, Wash., who sold diplomas for a price, according to a three-year federal investigation that ended in guilty pleas from the Randocks to mail and wire fraud. The inquiry into their diploma mill, which operated most often as St. Regis University, provides the most up-to-date portrait of how diploma factories can harness the rapidly evolving power of the Internet to expand their reach.”

“Mike Teasdale, Planning Director at Harvest Digital, comments, ‘This research shows that user reviews are not just one of the factors that consumers use to decide between different holidays, but are the most trusted information source of all. Recent moves like the Guardian’s new travel portal featuring user generated content and the launch of WAYN suggest that the industry is waking up to the importance of consumer opinions to travel choices. This has implications for all kinds of non-generic services and not just travel. For example, students choosing between different colleges are now very likely to look for the opinions of current alumni before making a decision.”

“User-generated content sites are more likely to be seen as trustworthy by women than men and, when it comes to age, are most trusted by 25-34 year olds. However, the validity of user reviews are truly championed by the travel industry’s most important group - frequent travellers.”

Parents are beginning to worry about a new enemy – the cyber criminals. These criminals no longer lurk around in the school premise, they exist predominantly online. According to a study by Rochester Institute of Technology, 59% of cyber victims interviewed said that their perpetrators are a “friend” whom they know personally. And that perpetrator is significantly more likely to be a student than an adult. Parents are beginning to worry as more children are spending more time online in the cyberspace. They have no control over who are the people they interact with online.

eIDV.co.uk, a new online identity verification portal was launched recently. The portal enables advisers to provide better data security for their clients at it minimizes the need for valuable personal information such as Social Security Number, bank account numbers, credit card number and so on to be posted, photocopied and stored using the traditional method. This new service allows users to verify a client’s identity in seconds, thus avoiding the problem of identity fraud. Find out more about this portal here.

Dave Pye over at ThirstyPony has listed 11 business networking sites which are suited for your online reputation management. These sites are extremely helpful for your online brand reputation management. You want to be able to control what people see when they Google the name of your company. These sites allow search engines to crawl through them and usually rank high up in the Google rankings. Read more about it here.

“According to an article in Australian IT, “ING Direct has led the way in using anti-money-laundering identification processes to come up with a method for opening an account purely online. The Dutch bank has claimed bragging rights for the first end-to-end online account opening facility in Australia…which uses an almost instant online identity verification process instead of the traditional 100-point security check to allow customers to open savings and term deposit accounts.”
“ING Direct has taken advantage of new AML [anti-money laundering] legislation that allows financial institutions to replace the traditional 100 point security check, which uses physical documents such as passports, with electronic AML compliance checks.”