This document discusses privacy icons and attributes of privacy that are important for users to understand. It identifies 7 key things that matter most in privacy: whether a service shares user data with third parties, barters user data, shares data with government/law enforcement, protects user data, gives users control of their data, builds profiles for secondary use from user data, and uses ad networks and under what terms. The document debates challenges around creating standardized privacy icons that concisely represent these important privacy attributes to users in an understandable way.

1. Privacy
Icons
Aza Raskin/Creative Lead Firefox/@azaaza

7. Product.

8. People do not
know want
they want.
We are the
experts.

9. 87%
of people in the US can be uniquely
identified with just zip code, birthday, and
gender.

10. Every time we ask the
user a question they
don’t understand or
don’t care about, we
have failed.

11. Respect the user?

13. FOCUS

14. 1

15. What attributes
of privacy should
people care about?

16. Creative
Commons?

18. Irreducible
Complexity

20. Do not penalize
business as usual.
Isn’t 3rd party sharing intrinsically suspect?

21. Binding Icons

22. Read+Write

23. Product.

25. Chicken & Egg?
Machine Readable

26. Normative.

27. Bad actors
won’t play?

28. 7 Things
That
Taxonomy Matter Most
Attribute

29. Is you data used for secondary
use? And is it shared with 3rd
parties?
Mint.com vs. RealAge

30. Is your data bartered?

31. Under what terms is your data
shared with the government
and with law enforcement?

32. Does the company take
reasonable measures to protect
your data in all phases of
collection and storage.
This icon will probably be removed as not pertaining directly to privacy.

33. Does the service give you
control of your data?

34. Does the service use your data
to build and save a profile for
non-primary use?

35. Are ad networks being used
and under what terms?

37. THE STRAWMAN

38. http://azarask.in
@azaaza
Is a Creative The 7 Things
Commons for That Matter
Privacy Most In Privacy
Possible