introduction
law
bodies
advocacy
reports
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advocacy groups
This page points to
Australian and international bodies with an interest in online consumer
issues.
Australian
consumer rights bodies
The Australian
Consumers' Association site offers information about consumers
rights.
Among specialist groups with an interest in cosumer issues
are:
the Australian Digital
Alliance (ADA)
- intellectual property
the Australian Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email (CAUBE.AU)
- spam
overseas
The Consumers
International organisation, representing consumer bodies in many
countries, last year released Consumers@shopping,
an international comparative study of electronic commerce that
highlighted concerns regarding service reliability, redress, ordering
processes, applicable law, cookies and other matters.
Most
national consumer organisations, such as the US Consumers
Union, the Consumers Federation
of America (CFA) and the UK
from the National
Consumer Council (NCC),
are online.
Specialist groups include:
the
Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email (CAUCE),
the Junkbusters
organisation and Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS)
- spam
local industry
representatives
Locally the Australian Direct Marketing
Association (ADMA) has placed its direct marketing
Merchant Code of Conduct online.
The Institute of Chartered
Accountants licenses members under the global WebTrust
program.
overseas
Better Business Bureau Online (BBBO),
the website of the US Better Business Bureau (a commercial body),
provides information about the BBB's 'Reliability' and 'Privacy' seals.
In
November 2000 it unveiled the BBB Code of Online Business Practice,
based on principles of "truthful and accurate communications,
disclosure, information practices and security, customer satisfaction,
and protecting children". Resounding declarations of principle, are
one thing, day to day implementation by etailers and enforcement by the
BBB is another.
Its major rivals are TRUSTe - a
body supported by IBM, Microsoft and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) - and VeriSign.
TRUSTe's credibility is questionable; while its motto is "Building
A Web You Can Believe In" consumer trust wasn't encouraged when it
savaged Microsoft with a wet lettuce after privacy breaches earlier this
year and it's failure to do much when Disney-backed etailer Toysmart
crashed back to earth and began trying to market its clickstream
database.
BizRate,
WebGuardian
, WebWatchdog and Public
Eye are US commercial bodies running merchant rating services.
Netcheck Commerce Bureau (Netcheck)
provides complaint and dispute resolution
services in the US.
The Better Cyber Bureau (BCB),
again US-based, promotes ethical business standards through the BCB
Seal. The Better Internet Bureau Association (BIBA)
offers quality assurance services.
The recently established US Electronic
Commerce & Consumer Protection Group (E-Commerce
Group) - noted in the preceding part of this guide - includes America Online, AT&T, Dell, IBM, Microsoft,
Network Solutions, and AOL Time Warner.
The American Bar Association in October last year established
SafeShopping,
a website devoted to online consumer protection issues.
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