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The Problem With A 100-Word Privacy Policy
In SoMeIT (Social Media Information Technology), we are fully dedicated to satisfying all of your web needs, integrating your business to social networks.
Last Thursday a new bill was introduced by California Assemblymember Ed Chau that seeks to cut legalese in online privacy policies to a minimum and give people easy-to-digest policies.
From the bill itself:
“The privacy policy required by this section shall be no more than 100 words and shall be written in clear and concise language at no greater than an eighth grade reading level. The privacy policy shall include a statement indicating whether the personally identifiable information may be sold or shared with others, and if so, how and with whom the information may be shared.” Assembly Bill 242 proposed by California Assemblymember Ed Chau (D-Alhambra).
It sounds good. It really does. A privacy policy in 100 words or less, in simple language that even an eighth grader could understand. But is this a realistic answer to industry concerns, or just the latest in a slew of half-baked attempts by lawmakers to tackle the privacy issue? Does the bill have a chance of passing – and if so, would it be the answer to very public privacy problems? Maybe we’ve finally discovered the holy grail of privacy. But wait. Don’t sip from the chalice just yet.
Caution
While it’s true people often skip over lengthy policy documents because they’re lengthy, limiting the amount of words may do more harm than expected, by shackling and curbing just what developers and creators can tell consumers. And, long or short, people are going to skip disclosure policies.
That’s not the issue with which we should be concerned. Our concerns should lie in just what personal data our feudal lords are sharing with third parties and what kind of data retention policies they’re practicing. That’s the inherent problem with our security. Not how long the text of the policy is.
Jim Fenton, the chief security officer of digital identity service OneID, says the data-use issue is the real problem with the bill, which “doesn’t include information about how the recipient of the data may use it and how long any of the personally identifiable information may be kept.”
Parker Higgins, a free speech activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls the new bill a “stunt, plain and simple.” He says a word count basically guarantees writing a bad privacy policy for users.
“You can’t write a good privacy policy in 100 words, but you can write a bad one,” Higgins said. “It’s a real problem that privacy policies are too long and hard for most people to understand. But a limit of 100 words is not a real solution. A privacy policy that isn’t appropriately tailored to the actual data use is bad for users.”
Higgins isn’t the only one in the space who remains unconvinced.
CA legislator thinks privacy policies should be
2013-02-13 08:15:37
Source: http://someit.com/2013/02/13/the-problem-with-a-100-word-pr/
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