So if they have a EULA and full disclosure, no illegal downloads, blah blah blah BUT they steal commissions from honest advertisers, whether affiliates and/or merchants, they can still be certified? That doesn’t even come into consideration when evaluating an app? What the hell is that?? Their certification means diddly squat in our business. In fact, they’re hurting us a lot more than helping anything.

I wish all these so-called “adware gurus” who try to do “the best they can” (*cough cough*) to make them legal or whatever it is they’re always trying to do, just stayed out of this and left this kind of work to real experts on the matters at hand - like Kellie, Ben, or Wayne. If they can’t do the work themselves or don’t know what to look for, the least they could do is hire experts as consultants to steer them in the right direction.

Right now, they just plain suck.

Just my thoughts…

Catwoman

They are still an affiliate. They still do pop-ups. But none of that is part of TRUSTe’s certification. I haven’t seen anything in the TRUSTe documentation that how applications generate revenue is part of their certification process or what they are looking at.

For those in online advertising, I see this whole TRUSTe certification as yet another step in justifying software behavior with regards to revenue generation through user consent. And to legitimize the software overall. User consent is NOT the end all for acceptable practices by software. I’ve said it for years and my opinion hasn’t changed.

Catwoman