A Zango ad

After spending more than a year reviewing adware companies, nonprofit TRUSTe has issued its first "whitelist" of those that meet its certification guidelines, writes MediaPost.

Though WhenU and Vomba Network made the cut, Zango (which recently paid a $3 million fine to settle FTC charges) didn't. Adware companies serve pop-ups to people as they surf the web and are frequently in hot water with consumer groups and authorities, mostly for uploading adware onto computers without users' consent.

In the last several years, WhenU revised its policies in an attempt to reduce the chances of non-consensual installations. Among the changes, downloaders must now check an opt-in box that they consent to the installation. Before, that box usually came pre-checked.

AOL, CA, CNET Networks, Microsoft, Verizon and Yahoo sponsored the certification program, and according to TRUSTe they will use the whitelist "as a tool to help make business decisions related to advertising, partnering and distributing software products."