Online privacy policies

Online privacy becomes more and more important. This is related and with still growing number of various web apps, others web 2.0 features.
A new report by Carnegie Mellon University, authored by Aleecia McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor, states that online privacy policies take an average of 10 minutes to read. If every U.S. web user read the privacy policy at every site they went to, the time spent reading privacy policies would total 44.3 billion hours per year. Their recommendation? Regulation. They concluded that regulation might be necessary to "provide basic privacy protections."

Of course, you can imagine a lot of companies are not happy over this proposal, specifically those that take advantage of long privacy policies which they know no one reads.

Cranor, who's also a member of the EFF, thinks that people shouldn't have to read these extensive privacy policies in order to protect themselves - the FTC should get involved and regulate if companies aren't willing to improve the readability of these online documents.

If a privacy policy is long, does that mean it fails?

Privacy policies today only seem to be there for the hyper-aware online citizen for whom privacy is a major concern. The rest of us just hear about the breaches of trust when one of those folks takes the time to read the long and boring legalize and then warns the rest of us of their findings.

Alissa Cooper, chief computer scientist at the Center for Democracy & Technology, argues that "It's not only that they're long, but they're also complicated. They're not really written for your average Internet user to understand them."

The average internet user? There might be a question, what is the average internet user, the one who spents only a couple of hours on the internet per month?

Alissa Cooper added that the Center for Democracy & Technology has been considering ways to make privacy policies smaller and more manageable.

*Privatumo taisyklės

Duomenų apsauga ir privatumas internete šiomis dienomis yra ypatinga svarbūs klausimai. Tai siejasi ir su vis gausėjančiu paslaugų pasiekiamų per internetą spektru bei kitomis taip vadinamomis web 2.0 galimybėmis.

Aleecia McDonald ir Lorrie Faith iš Carnegie Mellon paskelbė pranešimą susijusį su privatumo internete taisyklėmis. Pranešime teigiama, jog vidutiniškai perskaityti privatumo taisykles užtrunka apie 10 minučių. Taigi jei kiekvienas Jungtinių Amerikos Valstijų interneto vartotojas skaitytų šias taisykles kiekviename aplankomame tinklalapyje, vidutiniškai per metus sugaištų apie 44.3 billijonus valandų. Pranešime rekomenduojama taikyti reguliacijos mechanizmą, kuris garantuotų pagrindinę privatumo apsaugą.

Gali susidaryti vaizdas, jog privatumo taisyklės/politika yra tik super atidiems ir besilaikantiems saugumo taisyklių interneto vartotojams.

Alissa Cooper teigimu, privatumo taisyklės/politika turėtų būti ir "įskaitomos". Sakoma, kad dažniausiai tai nėra skirta vidutiniam interneto vartotojui. Šioje vietoje gali kilti klausimas, koks gi yra vidutinis interneto vartotojas, gal toks kuris per mėnesį internete praleidžia tik keletą valandų?

Pasak Alissa Cooper, "Democracy & Technology" centras svarstė būdus kaip padaryti privatumo taisykles mažesnės apimties ir labiau valdomas.

Ką gi žiūrėsime kas bus toliau šioje srityje.