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Privacy Icons 2.0 - Update & Input Request
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Alex Fowler
Sep 29, 2011, 8:00:47 PM9/29/11
to drumbeat-pr...@lists.mozilla.org, David Kettler, Brian Kennish, Ben Adida, Elizabeth Stark, Aleecia McDonald, Ben Moskowitz, Harvey Anderson, Tom Lowenthal, Casey Oppenheim, Alexandra Moss, Sid Stamm, Tony Lai
Hi there -
Over the summer, a group met at Mozilla to discuss the current set of Mozilla's privacy icons, Disconnect.me's current crowd sourcing effort, and our interest in applying a set of privacy icons to Mozilla's web apps, add-ons, BrowserID, and mobile products. This message outlines a second direction for the privacy icons project, one we hope will provide developers a set of icons that they can apply to their apps.
For those of you who have been participating in this drumbeat project, the fact that our current set are normative won't come as a surprise. That's the point. The icons provide users with a way to tag a company's data handling practices with a label like "your data may be used for unintended purposes" to help the next person to make an informed decision about providing its site with his/her data or installing its app. This is an important use case for icons and one we're excited to see being put into action by Brian and Casey at Disconnect.me. Please check out their site to see how you can help at http://www.disconnect.me/db/icons.
When we looked at dog-fooding these icons within our own web sites, add-ons, and apps, however, we didn't find the current set to be ideal. We realized that what we want is a set of icons that are factual representations of our data handling practices, that we self-select to highlight key practices of interest, and that still enable users to differentiate sites, apps, or add-ons based on the visible icons and their personal preferences.
So we came up with another set of icons. We've posted what we came up with at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Privacy_Icons_v0.2, along with the use cases we're currently thinking about.
A few open questions for this approach include:
- as the icons use letters and numbers, as opposed to pictures, there could be trademark issues and difficulties to translate them into multiple languages
- how best to bucketize and define types of data such that they conform to people's expectations as to what is personal vs. sensitive
- thinking through weightings for different icons such that they become helpful to users in differentiating apps and sites (e.g., encryption, opt-in)
We're open to replacing the letters with graphics, but we didn't want to get caught up in design questions before further validating the approach and use cases for these icons.
At this point, we welcome input and discussion on the proposal. If there's enough interest, then we're open to convening a meeting in our offices to discuss the icons and direction for the drumbeat project.
Regards,
Alex
Alex Fowler
Global Privacy & Policy Leader
Mozilla
Over the summer, a group met at Mozilla to discuss the current set of Mozilla's privacy icons, Disconnect.me's current crowd sourcing effort, and our interest in applying a set of privacy icons to Mozilla's web apps, add-ons, BrowserID, and mobile products. This message outlines a second direction for the privacy icons project, one we hope will provide developers a set of icons that they can apply to their apps.
For those of you who have been participating in this drumbeat project, the fact that our current set are normative won't come as a surprise. That's the point. The icons provide users with a way to tag a company's data handling practices with a label like "your data may be used for unintended purposes" to help the next person to make an informed decision about providing its site with his/her data or installing its app. This is an important use case for icons and one we're excited to see being put into action by Brian and Casey at Disconnect.me. Please check out their site to see how you can help at http://www.disconnect.me/db/icons.
When we looked at dog-fooding these icons within our own web sites, add-ons, and apps, however, we didn't find the current set to be ideal. We realized that what we want is a set of icons that are factual representations of our data handling practices, that we self-select to highlight key practices of interest, and that still enable users to differentiate sites, apps, or add-ons based on the visible icons and their personal preferences.
So we came up with another set of icons. We've posted what we came up with at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Privacy_Icons_v0.2, along with the use cases we're currently thinking about.
A few open questions for this approach include:
- as the icons use letters and numbers, as opposed to pictures, there could be trademark issues and difficulties to translate them into multiple languages
- how best to bucketize and define types of data such that they conform to people's expectations as to what is personal vs. sensitive
- thinking through weightings for different icons such that they become helpful to users in differentiating apps and sites (e.g., encryption, opt-in)
We're open to replacing the letters with graphics, but we didn't want to get caught up in design questions before further validating the approach and use cases for these icons.
At this point, we welcome input and discussion on the proposal. If there's enough interest, then we're open to convening a meeting in our offices to discuss the icons and direction for the drumbeat project.
Regards,
Alex
Alex Fowler
Global Privacy & Policy Leader
Mozilla
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