Today (Wednesday) at Fall Internet World in New York, the eight main web portal companies and others, together with Truste, the industry non-profit privacy body will announce what one Truste board members told us would be the largest banner ad campaign ever launched on the web. Its aim will be to promote the increasingly desperate need for web sites to adopt some sort of privacy policy. The portals involved are Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, Microsoft, Netscape, Snap and Yahoo. The desperation derives from the October 24 European Union deadline, on which the European data directive will come into force. It will mean that companies doing business with European countries will have to comply with European data protection legislation that, among other things, means that companies moving data in and out of EU countries must have adequate level of data protection themselves, and in the eyes of the EU, the US currently does not. Therefore, the US government has told the internet and telecoms industries to get some sort of self- regulation in place or it will impose its own regulation. Truste has gathered some 270 members in its short life this year and today’s announcement will demonstrate the kinds of banner ads that will run from October 12 through to the end of this month. The campaign will deliver at least 150 million impressions, which is a lot by any measure. http://www.truste.org
MAJOR PORTALS LAUNCH PRIVACY AD CAMPAIGN
