OTA

This week Philadelphia hosts two important groups in the messaging industry as the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) and the Online Trust Alliance (OTA) both hold meetings there.

MAAWG’s 17th General Meeting began today, October 26 and goes to Wednesday, October 28. The meeting is to focus on critical technical and public policy issues, including bot mitigation, Web messaging abuse, and mobile spam among other topics. The keynote is U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. David B. Warner, who will outline the government’s new military cyber security defense initiative.

Also of interest on the mobile messaging front, is an overview of the proposed mobile spam act S.788. MAAWG endeavors to bring organizations together, and this meeting includes participation from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), the Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Kids Come First (FIRST Online), National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the ShawdowServer Foundation, an organization that gathers cybercrime intelligence, as well as other researchers and experts from academic institutions.

Messaging News will offer more from MAAWG in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

While MAAWG offers professional development training courses on October 29, OTA will hold its 2009 Online Trust & Brand Protection Summit. Event speakers, including the Better Business Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, Publishers Clearing House, Interactive Advertising Bureau, Microsoft and others, will share recommendations to help organizations protect not only their customers, but also their digital brands and stockholders.

Earlier this month, OTA published its Online Principles, a set of global guidelines for preserving and enhancing consumer trust and confidence, in an effort to avert what they see as a coming crisis in customer confidence. OTA is calling on organizations to make good data stewardship a corporate imperative. OTA first released a draft of its Online Principles for comment in April, gathered feedback from across the industry, and revised the Principles in a collective effort that included representatives from a number of leading brands, such as Publishers Clearing House, Microsoft, Visa, PayPal, American Greetings, Bank of America and others.

 “The promise of the Internet is achieved when consumer privacy and expectations are inline with business practices,” says Fran Maier, CEO of TRUSTe. “OTA’s Online Principles is a significant step to increasing accountability, while giving consumers confidence that abuse of their data and identity is thwarted. As stewards of consumer data, businesses maximize their online brand value and deepen customer relationships by building trust.”

OTA has published its 2009 Online Trust Principles & Business Practices on its Web site.

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Eye on Messaging is written by Stephanie Jordan, editor in chief of Messaging News. If you have story ideas or news to share, email her: sjordan [at] messagingnews [dot] com