Earlier this week PrivacyChoice, an organization working towards the betterment of online privacy, launched a new tool to help users more clearly understand how websites are using their information. Privacyscore.com rates websites, on a scale from the low 0 to the ideal 100, on “how their policy protects personal data” as well as “the privacy qualifications of trackers on their site.” For a breakdown of how the intricacies of these ratings are calculated, I suggest reading WIRED and ZDNet’s humble explanations of why their websites received rather unfavorable scores.
PrivacyChoice recognizes that this is a work in progress. There are many sites that have yet to be rated, not everyone may agree with the way PrivacyChoice weighted the privacy issues included in their formula, and there are various corners of the internet that this edition of the tool simply can’t cover – for example, Facebook may have a score of 95, but that doesn’t account for the privacy concerns garnered by playing games like Farmville. However, they are working towards improvement with projects that include an algorithm that will be able to analyze user submitted privacy policies as well as developing methods to score more specialized areas of the web such as mobile websites and apps.
In my opinion, this is a great step in creating a more transparent environment regarding online privacy. By providing users with easy to use tools 
like Privacyscore.com and the associated browser add-on, PrivacyChoice is taking away a website’s ability to hide behind convoluted terms of use agreements. As a result, those websites will be forced to improve their privacy policies, in order to receive a better score, or suffer. And, according to PrivacyChoice executive director Jim Brock, many sites made a point to do just that before the site launched on Sunday.
I completely agree that this is a step in the right direction! I love that they have a browser add-on, and I think that will be really popular with users. It will certainly force companies to improve their privacy policies, and I hope it will also encourage users to be more discerning in their choice of websites. It’s fantastic that they’re making it easier for the general public to understand their privacy risks, and I hope they’ve got a great publicity campaign going so it will go into widespread usage. Certainly they have kinks to work out with their rating system and algorithm, but it seems very promising–especially according to this part of the WIRED.com article:
“‘We show this to websites and the first question they ask is how do I get my score up,” Brock said. ‘We tell them you have to talk to the people who track on your site and tell them, ‘We need you to delete data, to be more explicit about what you do with data.’”
Ostensibly, this may reduce invasive advertising and tracking issues or at least force companies to be more open about their practices. I hope the idea is as good in practice as it sounds in theory!
Thanks for blogging about this David, I hadn’t known anything about this. It’s a really great idea, like Sara said, to have it right there on the browser, available at all times. I do think, though, that some may use it as a substitute for getting intimately familiar with the privacy policies of sites they frequent (cuz we all do that currently, right?!). The example you gave of Facebook’s rating of 95 not reflecting applications is a glaring example of a misleading score, since applications are involved in so much of what people use facebook for. And though they might work out the kinks specific to a site like Facebook, with tons and tons of users, kinks related to other less popular sites might go unnoticed for much longer.
Also, with something like Facebook, or any site that requires an account, am I correct in assuming that the score reflects the privacy capability of the site rather than the privacy of the site as it’s actually being used? For instance, if a user sees a score of 95 for Facebook, but that user is actually not utilizing the privacy tools to their full potential, then their actual experience with Facebook might be much less secure. They might wrongfully assume that their information is safe. Is there some sort of feature that addresses this type of issue?
I definitely see both of your points. Like Sara, I think this will be really great for educating the public. Until I took this class I had honestly never read a ToS that wasn’t bank related. I would simply click “agree” on Privacy Statements and I admit that I was mislead by that word “privacy.” I mean, it’s completely different from that HIPAA paper you sign at the doctor’s office! I had no idea just how much info was being collected and shared on me, and it would be exhausting to parse through the terms for every single site I decide to use. I think this is a great happy medium. It holds companies accountable and it gets people interested at the same time.
Lauren, you are totally right about Facebook and other sites that allow users to control their profiles and privacy settings. Also, after reading several ToS for class and the group project I am finding that many sites that incorporate third party ads and services have very little proclaimed control over how that party will use your information. They simply advise you to chase down that group’s privacy policy if you decide to click on an ad. It is very unclear to users how the the terms and policies of the host site relate to all of the other actors/apps/games/quizzes/ads that exist via that site.
There is definitely a lot of work to be done to perfect this tool but I think overall this is a pretty awesome idea.