Many common Watchdog complaints can be avoided. This month, we continue the TRUSTe compliance team’s series of Tech Tips that discuss some simple actions to take to reduce Watchdog complaints. Read past tips on http://www.truste.org/sealholders/tech_tips.php.

Tip: To avoid “Unable to Contact Licensee” Watchdog complaints, regularly update the contact information listed in your privacy statement.

Many privacy statements contain outdated or inaccurate contact information, which results in users submitting “unable to contact licensee” Watchdog complaints against the site.  

It’s easy to avoid receiving such complaints: Simply maintain current contact information within your Web site’s privacy statement. TRUSTe highly recommends that all member sites perform periodical verification of the contact information posted on their site’s privacy statement to ensure that privacy issues are received and handled in a timely manner.

As a reminder, if you plan to make any material changes to your privacy statement or privacy practices -- that is, changes that affect the way customers’ information is handled -- it is necessary to run the changes through a dedicated privacy expert at TRUSTe: your account manager. For more information on defining and identifying material changes, please read TRUSTe’s June 2003 Tech Tip.

Alex Yap is a senior compliance analyst at TRUSTe.

 

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