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Thanks for a great summary! We found that if people actually were to read privacy policies they would spend as much time doing so as web surfing.
The Kickstarter project looks like fun. See another effort in a similar direction from Lorrie’s lab: http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/privacyLabel/ (not a project I worked on.)
It has always seemed to me that part of how food labels work at all is via percentage values. I do not understand Vitamin A, let alone the biological details of why I should care, but I do understand that 12% RDA is lower than 33% RDA. If we are to make privacy notices actionable, we need not just shorter, standardized notices but clearer notice. There have been dozens of attempts at this problem with “let’s do Creative Commons icons for privacy!” turning up as a new-sounding idea on a rather regular schedule. Noting the ways short (aka layered) notices fizzled could be instructive. It is all too easy to have users both more confident yet more incorrect about data collection and use practices. Plus, companies incentives do not always align with the goal of clear notice.
Yet prior history does not mean all such attempts are doomed, at all. Certainly the status quo can and should be improved upon. That so many people attempt similar projects suggests sooner or later something may stick, perhaps in the mobile space first where there are fewer moving parts to document. I would urge building in resources for serious testing and revision for any such projects. My favorite example is the 322 page Evolution of a Prototype Financial Privacy Notice from Kleimann.
Thanks again, and best of luck to the Kickstarter project team.
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