A trustmark gives confidence to customers and indicates to them that it is safe to do business with the web site displaying it.
E-commerce trust marks are intended as a way for online shoppers to be protected by online service providers who ensure that websites are securely processing information that could be used to subvert their persona, financial accounts or cause any harm through hacking, viruses or other intervention related to data exchange such as denial of service etc.
The trustmark shows that the website being visited offers consumer protection of data and privacy of interaction so that their purchases may be made safely and their peronal information only ever shared with authorized recipients. Some trust marks simply confirm that a business has been accredited by another organization who may or may not be of importance. Accreditations from well-known organizations such as the Better Business Bureau are usually of more value from a customer confidence viewpoint.
Examples of ecommerce trustmark service providers include;
- The Better Business Bureau (BBB): The BBB maintains the BBBOnLine, a trust mark that that confirms the business has been accredited by the BBB.
- TRUSTe: This is an Internet privacy services provider enabling generation of a hosted online privacy policy.
- VeriSign: This is for websites secured by VeriSign secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates, which indicate the website is using the latest traffic encryption protocols.
- McAfee Secure: This advises visitors that a site uses McAfee security scanning services on its ecommerce pages to provide daily vulnerability assessments and protection from hackers.
- Comodo HackerProof: This is a trust mark from a daily scanning service that checks for security vulnerabilities and reminds visitors of their security at the site bearing the logo.
Consumers have growing concerns about fraud and identity theft when doing business in an e-commerce website, such as shopping online. Online retailers secure online transactions with encryption. However, consumers want more assurance that their information is secure and that they will not be vulnerable to hacker attempts and breaches of their personal information. This has created a demand for e-commerce trustmarks to reduce consumer privacy and address security fears.
When clicking an e-commerce trustmark, a browser will usually display the company’s website information as well as the validity period of the certificate. The certificate is used to encrypt communication from user computers to the company’s website. Having a valid certificate ensures that all communications are secure and protected.
Trustmarks can easily be faked and there is even online software that will create the graphics to produce one. The only way to tell is to visit the issuing website to ascertain how genuine the issuer of the trustmark is. The widely known ones are easy to check out online to avoid confusion as there should be a link from the logo or thereabouts. If there is no hyperlink, there is little reason to afford any trust.
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