I Agreed To What?!? — Image in the article quoted

We all are very familiar with nutrition labels on milk bottles and groceries. They disclose to us that water has 0% fat and that the burger you are heating in the microwave contains 70%fat and some interesting chemicals.

But when it comes to privacy considerations of web services we are on our own.

Until now.

Joe Andrieu wants to change this. A standardized web site “health label” could help you out of the current situation. As he writes in A Standard Information Sharing Label by Joe Andrieu — Kickstarter (with video),

“Did you know that Google keeps your Searches forever? (Only “anonymizing” them if you stop using Google for at least 18 months!)

“Did you know that Facebook automatically shares your information with Bing, Pandora, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Rotten Tomatoes, Clicker, Scribd, and Docs, unless you manually opt-out?

“Did you know … that YOU AGREED to this?

“Most of use have no idea what Terms of Service we agree to when we started using our favorite websites. (Remember that little box that you checked as you signed up?)

“If we actually read all the Terms of Service we allegedly agree to, it would take as many as 300 hours per year (or nearly 7.5 weeks of full-time work).

“There should be an easy, fair way for us, as consumers, to check the details of how OUR data will be used… right when we sign up.

“Instead of burying the details in huge “Terms of Use and Privacy Policies,” there should be a short, simple Label that explains who will get our data and what they will do with it.

“Here it is!   The Standard Information Sharing Label.

“(It’s like a USDA Nutrition Facts label for personal information that users will share with companies):”

A Standard Information Sharing Label by Joe Andrieu — Kickstarter

In my opinion this would really make it easier to decide at which web sites we confidently can enter personal information and which ones we should avoid.

What do you think is the Web ready for such a label? Seems we are not since the authors could not get the requested funding on Kickstarter. But someone should take this idea up get wide support and help Joe to realize his (and our) dream.

Related articles

• Standard Information Sharing Labels (windley.com)
• Support Standard Information Sharing Labels (equalsdrummond.name)
• Privacy labels aim to control prying eyes, personal data (zdnet.com)
• A way to see what you get (blogs.law.harvard.edu)
• It all starts with sharing… (joeandrieu.com)
• Badges for the Standard Label Kickstarter (joeandrieu.com)
• Survey: Facebook, Google privacy policies are incomprehensible (zdnet.com)
• They sell your privacy! We don’t know who they are! (tektab.com)