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Privacy Policies More Readable, But Still Hard to Understand </h1>
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<br><ul class=""><li class=""><a class="" href="http://topics.wsj.com/person/A/biography/7743">Elizabeth Dwoskin</a><div><div class="">
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<dl class="" style="width:553px"><dt class=""><img class="" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-LR863_PINTER_G_20151214144359.jpg" alt="" height="369" width="553"></dt><dd class="" style="text-align:right">Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg</dd></dl>
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<p>In 2012, researchers calculated it would take 25 days to read all the
densely worded privacy policies an average Internet user had agreed to.
Nearly four years later, some publishers of websites and apps are
favoring plain English over legalese – with mixed results.</p>
<p>Among others, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=FB">Facebook</a> Inc.<span id="0.49802601121168766"><a target="" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=FB?mod=inlineTicker" class=""><span class="">FB</span> <span class="">-0.65%</span></a></span>, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=FIT">Fitbit</a> Inc.<span id="0.15482958744658182"><a target="" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=FIT?mod=inlineTicker" class=""><span class="">FIT</span> <span class="">+0.98%</span></a></span>, Pinterest Inc., Reddit Inc., Spotify AB, and <a href="http://www.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=005930.SE">Samsung Electronics</a> Co.<span id="0.1291624825930171"><a target="" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=005930.SE?mod=inlineTicker" class=""><span class="">005930.SE</span> <span class="">0.00%</span></a></span><b> </b>have made efforts to present reader-friendly privacy policies. Some made the changes proactively, others under pressure.</p>
<p>The effort to simplify privacy policy language is a response to
public suspicion of opaque policies and the collection of ever more
data, said Fatemeh Khatibloo, a Forrester Research Inc. analyst who
studies privacy. Some companies “are finally getting on board with the
idea that privacy — and how they use our data — is closely tied to
trustworthiness,” she said. In addition, they’re trying to write
policies that will be viewed favorably in Europe, which has set a higher
bar than the U.S. for what counts as consent to use personal data.</p>
<p>For instance, image bookmarking site Pinterest voluntarily revamped
its policy, telling users, “Because we’re an internet company, some of
the concepts below are a little technical, but we’ve tried our best to
explain things in a simple and clear way.”</p>
<p>The policy goes on to explain, “We may log how often people use two
different versions of a product, which can help us understand which
version is better.” This language describes a process known as A/B
testing, seldom made public, in which users are shown different versions
a page or feature to test its effectiveness.</p>
<p>However, the phrase “use two different versions of a product” is
ambiguous, given that Pinterest is a site where people buy consumer
products and presumably go on to use them.</p>
<p>Pinterest said its use of the word product was meant to cover a range
of its site’s attributes. “We typically A/B test new products–i.e., new
visual search–which include not only page design but new utility,” the
company wrote in an email.</p>
<p>“You go down a rabbit hole of explanation, but it’s still difficult
to explain how these things work,” said Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis
Shayon Professor of Communication at Annenberg School for Communication
at the University of Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>Anxiety over corporate use of personal information is running high,
said Lee Rainie, Director of Internet, Science, and Technology Research
at the Pew Research Center. However, it’s not clear whether more
explicit privacy policies make users more comfortable. “There isn’t a
lot of evidence” that people are changing their behavior or attitude
toward technology companies based on the rewritten policies, Rainie
said. Complaints tend to die down but flare up again in response to
critical press reports and the like, he said.</p>
<p>A recent Pew study found that 38% of consumers are confused by
privacy policies, and more than half of users of mobile apps have
elected at least once not to download an app after discovering how much
personal information it would collect.</p>
<p><span style="color:black">Facebook, which is perennially criticized for its confusing privacy policies, introduced </span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><a style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/04/facebook-rolls-out-privacy-checkups-to-all-1-3-billion-users/" target="_blank">last year</a></span><span style="color:black"> a
cartoon Blue Dinosaur to help users conduct a “privacy checkup” and
warn them when they were about to distribute a status update beyond
their friend group.</span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"> The feature <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">may give users more control over what information they reveal, but it also forces them to choose among a </span><span class="" style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">dizzying</span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> array of options from who can see their cell phone number to whether their Facebook posts appear in Google search results.</span></span></p>
<p>Spotify this year revamped its policy’s language to tell users that
it planned to collect their photos, contacts, and location. The policy
provoked a backlash among the music streaming service’s subscribers, who
demanded that the company explain why it needed such information. The
company overhauled the policy statement one month later, explaining what
it planned to do with each piece of data and apologizing for the
“understandable confusion” the earlier statement had created.</p>
<p>Samsung also got into hot water after its privacy policy informed
users that voice recognition software in a TV remote-control unit could
relay words spoken nearby. It rewrote its privacy policy and published
ablog post titled, “Samsung Smart TVs Do Not Monitor Living Room
Conversations.”</p>
<p>Representatives of Facebook, Spotify and Samsung did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Rather than a detailed privacy policy
for each company, Forrester’s Ms. Khatibloo suggested a privacy
scorecard that ranked many companies on a variety of benchmarks. That
way, consumers could see quickly how a given company stacked up, she
said.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Mike Yang, Pinterest’s general counsel and author of the company’s
latest policy updates, said that, as Pinterest’s business shifted toward
advertising and e-commerce, he has wrestled with how to explain the
changes to users. He tried to resist his urge to stuff the policy with
legal language, he said.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“We thought, what is the simplest way to describe it,” he said. “It’s hard sometimes.”</p><p><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/12/30/privacy-policies-more-readable-but-still-hard-to-understand/">http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/12/30/privacy-policies-more-readable-but-still-hard-to-understand/</a><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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