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Privacy Partnership 2000, an initiative organised by the Californian TRUSTe company, counts America Online (AOL), Microsoft, RealNetworks, Yahoo! and Excite@Home among its members.

According to a press release issued this morning the campaign will focus on three main objectives - promoting TRUSTe's own Privacy Seal hallmark, emphasising the importance of privacy policy notifications and directing users to the TRUSTe Web site, which contains a wealth of educational material for consumers.

"We want to make sure consumers know what the Privacy Seal means and how they can use it to stay in control of their personal information," says Bob Lewin, CEO of TRUSTe.

The seal is awarded to Web sites that meet stringent criteria, demonstrating respect for online privacy and allowing users to make informed decisions

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when giving out personal information. Privacy Partnership 2000 will feature a highly-publicised media campaign, making use of full-page advertisements in major US newspapers, public service radio announcements and, naturally, banner advertising on the Web.

But several of the key players in Privacy Partnership 2000 have poor reputations in the privacy arena. They are now making a concerted effort to improve their images.

Last week Microsoft announced a cookie management update for Internet Explorer 5.5, after a wave of incidents in which cookies were reportedly used to collect personal data without users' consent.

RealNetworks has previously come under fire following revelations that its RealJukebox music software was surreptitiously gathering information about users' listening habits and relaying it to the company. RealNetworks apologised profusely and swiftly released a patch to disable this covert activity, but the incident left an unpleasant taste in the mouths of many users.

And most recently AOL has been criticised by its rivals in the Instant Messaging (IM) market, who allege that AOL is raising fabricated privacy and security concerns to deny others access to its own IM service. It is also being sued by a user who claims that the company is spying on his downloading habits.

Joel Harrison

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