Can You Trust What You See on the Web?

Can you trust what you see on the web? Can you trust companies on the web? Can you trust how companies handle your information on the web?
These are big questions for both users and reluctant non-users today - from the world of e-commerce to the news and markets sectors of the Internet.

Interestingly, it has a role on corporate web sites as well. At the National Investor Relations Institute 1998 annual conference, one IR manager asked how corporate content might be seen as being clearly more reliable than other data that users come across on Web sites.

As it happens, a way of ratifying corporate utterances has been promulgated by the AICPA, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and its Canadian counterpart, the CICA, Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. The new certification is called CPA WebTrust. Most major accounting firms have been trained in use and application of the WebTrust standards and principles.

Strictly speaking, the WebTrust and its associated seal of approval, to be displayed on qualified Web sites, are designed to help businesses succeed in Internet commerce, according to the AICPA. This occurs by certifying privacy and security on Web sites as well as the legitimacy of business entities.

But the AICPA also points out on its Web site at www.aicpa.org that it is committed to expanding the assurance services of its member accounting firms. It also states that: "The WebTrust seal is designed to provide broad general assurance on the Web site as a whole, pertaining to a vendor's business practices and systems for providing transactional accuracy, security and privacy over the web."

This latter issue, privacy, takes on particular importance for IROs who have Web site forms asking for information about visitors. This collected information is becoming a political hot potato.

The question of how private data is handled by corporations has caused a rush of activity in Washington and elsewhere to ensure corporations are not forced by Congress to take on a heavy load of statutory requirements regarding protection of individual information. Indeed, dozens of major firms, from America Online to Xerox, have banded together in the On-Line Privacy Alliance (www.privacyalliance.org) to head off legislative action on the matter. They were among others testifying at Department of Commerce and House Commerce committee hearings in late June.

All corporate officers overseeing web sites would do well to ensure they are up to date on these matters, and it couldn't hurt to get the AICPA seal of approval on your site now, especially if yours is a new company whose credibility is still being built on Wall Street.

[First published in UPDATE, the National Investor Relations Institute]

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