Evaluating Website Privacy Polices

Evaluating Website Privacy Polices

“It’s a tough job market out there. Protecting my privacy is a luxury I can’t afford right now.” WRONG!

Resumes are a valuable, highly sought-after commodity. Protect your privacy by protecting your resume (or “profile”). Be very choosy about where you leave your resume. It could save the job you have now and in the future. Choosing a Job Site is a section of Job-Hunt that should help you make the best possible web job site choices. The Internet Resume section should help you with your resume.

Understanding the TRUSTe and Other Privacy Seals

Whenever you find one of the privacy organizations’ seals on a site, be sure to click on it to verify that it is real. Scammy/scummy sites may display privacy seals that they are not authorized to display. It’s easy to verify whether or not the seal is authorized, but you MUST click on the seal to do it.

That seal should be linked to a page on the seal organization’s Website which specifically names the sits which displayed the seal, and states that the linked site is entitled to post the seal because they comply with the program.

If the link takes you to the seal organization’s home page, another page of the seal organization’s site which does not name the originating site, or to an error page, the link is not genuine, and the site which displays it is NOT to be trusted!

Note: A TRUSTe or other privacy seal logo does not guarantee that a site will protect your privacy! It does means that they disclose their true practices to you, and offer a reliable method of “opting out” of their system.

Because online privacy is such a serious issue, services that audit a site’s compliance with its own privacy policy (e.g. TRUSTe) have developed and are becoming increasingly visible and useful.

Some sites show a green “TRUSTe” logo, indicating that they have joined the Trust-E organization and comply with the TRUSTe program’s requirements. Be sure to click on the Trust-E logo (or go to the site — http://www.truste.org) to verify that the Web site is authorized to use the logo. The link should take you to a page specifically about that website, not to the TRUSTe home page. If the link goes to the TRUSTe home page, the site is not part of the TRUSTe program.

Privacy Policies:


Choosing a Job Site can be tough, and should be approached carefully. Read this section of Job-Hunt.Org before you start posting your resume at any job sites.


Susan P. JoyceAbout the author…

Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. A veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a recent Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. Since 1998, Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt.org. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg and on Facebook, LinkedIn.
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