Privacy Icons

Privacy Icons

The Problem

We begin with one major problem about privacy policies (and privacy communications in general): the language in this space is so complicated that users can't understand it. As a result they've generally stopped caring, and when they do take time to think about privacy, they feel duped. Sites make it too complicated to understand, and besides, users have little choice: sometimes there's only one game in town, so to speak, and the price of admission is personal data. And so users don't bother trying to understand or differentiate among the privacy practices of most online sites and services. Businesses, in turn, have trouble conveying to users that they do care about privacy, and this affects their ability to differentiate themselves from competitors based on privacy.

We began our problem-solving process, then, with two points of view. The first is the consumer who, to some degree, "wants" to make better choices about privacy but has become inured to the current landscape and, moreover, has little time to research and process things. The second point of view is that of the business that—however rare this is—wants to do better at communicating its privacy practices.

We settled on the business—specifically, the smaller, less established startup—POV because we determined that it's easier to find a platform and gain leverage from the business side. From there, good privacy practices can spread to other businesses, and the benefits will redound to users.

The Idea

We're to find the point where consumer needs—defined both by consumers' demonstrated frustration with the length and density of privacy policies and by the importance of being able to make quick judgments about whether to consent to a privacy practice—meet businesses' desires to make their privacy practices clearer.

To that end we want to give consumers and businesses alike a simple, easy-to-use way to convey and process privacy practices. But we don't mean just to translate websites' privacy policies into simpler icons, or to provide a granular, machine-readable language for mapping privacy practices. We think the solution has to be as simple as it can be. That way users don't get frustrated with learning curves and legalese, and businesses feel comfortable adopting a product that doesn't demand legal nitpicking and constant reconfiguration.

To do this, we're trying to develop some baseline statements or pledges that that consumers find helpful in making the threshold decision of whether to use a site or service, and businesses likewise find useful for communicating that same baseline principle. We plan to craft these statements with input from an ample set of Silicon Valley startups and privacy-interested users. Then we will find a group of startups willing to adopt a pledge or pledges, and publicize this adoption to gain public currency.