Slashdot Mirror
New Tool Suite Helps Track Privacy Policies
An anonymous reader writes "Forbes reports that The Internet Society announced this week the availability of the Identity Management Policy Audit System, a suite of tools designed to give Internet users a clearer understanding of the online usage policies of the websites they visit. Born out of a collaboration between The Internet Society, the University of Colorado, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center for Democracy and Technology, the system consists of a free, open-source Firefox plug-in that checks a library of scraped terms of service and privacy policies from several popular websites. If a site changes the fine print of one of its policies, the plug-in notifies the user when they visit the website next. According to Forbes, 'that functionality would help users spot controversial switcheroos in sites' legalese, such as Facebook's change last year that suddenly gave the site the right to use your photos and other content.'"
Way to not read the summary. It states that the plugin notifies you when the PP changes. Which means you'd have to have read it in the first place anyways. Do you seriously expect someone to read the PP of every site they visit for every visit they make just to notice changes?
Why was this tagged as EFF? There was not one link to any of EFF's websites, and as far as I know from any of the linked articles, this is not something EFF is involved with, however in line this is with their values and intentions.
Why can't websites use standardized privacy policies and TOSs ? Sure they would need to make small changes specific to their business or whatever, but you could make it modular, etc. Wouldn't it be nice to see something like this:
Our Privacy Policy:
*Standard Non-Financial, Non-Sensitive Privacy Policy
*<two application-specific paragraphs that anyone can read quickly>
Software and media does something vaguely similar with licenses right? So why would this not work?