06/22/2017

What Makes a Site Untrustworthy, Anyway?

Three categories determine trustworthiness

A new analysis from the Online Trust Alliance notes that a failure to focus on issues of transparency and consumer protection were major reasons that sites didn’t find a place on the group’s Honor Roll this year.

On the surface, DigitalOcean, American Greetings, Publishers Clearing House and Under Armour have little to nothing in common, except for one thing: Each company has one of the most trustworthy sites on the entire internet, according to the Online Trust Alliance, an initiative of the Internet Society.

The problem, of course, is that not every website is trustworthy—a point dwelled upon by OTA, which just released the 2017 edition of its Online Trust Audit & Honor Roll [PDF]. The alliance found that while more sites than ever passed its tests in three major categories (e.g., consumer protection, site security and privacy) with flying colors and despite tighter criteria, many sites failed due to a combination of issues with consumer protection, site security or privacy.

Please click here to read the complete article on Associations Now.