Partner Article

Accreditation marks without appropriate control erode trust

In a world of online delivery, in which it is near impossible to know what lies beyond a glossy website, accreditation and trustmarks can help to engender trust in end users, allowing businesses to demonstrate to prospects that they meet the relevant professional standards. The challenge is that, as it stands, almost every trustmark, reseller symbol and accreditation logo can be simply copied with a standard ‘right-click’ or lifted from a website’s source code. There are very few safeguards currently in place to ensure that someone cannot simply copy and paste a trustmark onto their own website.

Taking for example accreditations such as Gas Safe or the Federation of Small Businesses. If an unscrupulous website can readily copy and wear these badges, as is currently the case, how can someone know whether or not an accreditation or certification mark on any given website is the genuine article?

The answer lies in the live linking of such badges, a step which would allow end users to quickly determine their legitimacy, whilst also granting accrediting bodies the power to control the distribution and use of trustmarks in real time.

It’s vital that accreditation bodies take steps to secure and monitor the use of their trustmarks to ensure that they don’t fall in to the wrong hands. Brand protection tool Yoshki monitors, protects and manages the deployment of images and logos by assigning them with live unique links, which can be distributed and, if necessary, withdrawn at any time. The use of such software is vital in restoring the integrity of trustmarks and providing end users and businesses with peace of mind.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Global Brands Protection .