Web sites certified by TRUSTe as respecting people’s privacy are actually less trustworthy than sites that forego certification, according to a study released this month by Benjamin Edelman, a doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard University. TRUSTe, a nonprofit group that evaluates privacy policies, said in its blog that the report was inaccurate and that the group required certified sites to adhere to "a strict set of standards."
Four years ago, when Mr. Edelman was a first-year student at Harvard Law School, he sued an Internet-filtering company for the right to disseminate the list of Web sites the company blocked. A judge dismissed the case. –Andrea L. Foster
