Privacy Policies are Complicated
Pretty much every website that you visit, regardless of its category would have a Privacy Policy section. In this section, the website will outline what kind of information is collected from you and how it is managed. The truth is that even though we should, most of us do not bother reading these privacy policies when visiting a website. In fairness, there are many websites that do not even have a privacy policy and others that keep it so hidden, so extensive or so complicated, that for all purposes they may as well not have one. As boring and irrelevant that it seems, it is important to know how a website manages your data. Thankfully there is a simple solution to find out without spending too much time reading their privacy policies.
Disconnect Privacy Icons Simplifies It
With Disconnect Privacy Icons you can get an overview of the approach that a website has towards privacy. The tool allows you to grasp the main terms from a site’s privacy policy, as well the most important points about the way your information is collected, used and managed. Disconnect Privacy Icons comes with an option called “Disconnect Search”, which allows you to search in Google anonymously. There are different Privacy Icons and each of them, represents an aspect of privacy that categorizes the performance of a website when handling your data. Red stands for high risk for your privacy, Green means that the site can be trusted in that area, while Grey indicates that there is not information available.
Disconnect Privacy Icons was recently launched remain under development, which means that there is not a large amount of data available at the time and many websites may appear as Grey. However, once their popularity increases, the information provided by Privacy Icons is bound to be expanded. The information available from Privacy Icons comes from TRUSTe Privacy Policy Database. The privacy policy of thousands of websites across the world is extensively analysed. The Privacy Icons has its background in the initiatives led by Mozilla and which counted with the collaboration from important privacy organizations such as the Center for Democracy and Technology, the W3C and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Disconnect Privacy Icons is an open source an free plugin but you can donate to Disconnect for its usage. The company is a certified Benefit corporation. This means that while it is a for-profit company, it takes into consideration the social and environmental impact of their decisions and products. With Privacy Icons you can tell you if a website is good when it come to crucial aspects such as Child Privacy, Data Retention, Expected Use and Do Not Track compliance. When you hover over an icon with your mouse, an explanation about what it represents will be displayed. Once you install the Disconnect Privacy Icons extension, the Icon information will appear in Google search results of websites whenever you perform a search. This will help you to identify if a website manages well your data or if it handles it poorly.