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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday October 11 2017, @01:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-make-them-100-pages-long dept.

The key to turning privacy notices into something useful for consumers is to rethink their purpose. A company's policy might show compliance with the regulations the firm is bound to follow, but remains impenetrable to a regular reader.

The starting point for developing consumer-friendly privacy notices is to make them relevant to the user's activity, understandable and actionable. As part of the Usable Privacy Policy Project, my colleagues and I developed a way to make privacy notices more effective.

The first principle is to break up the documents into smaller chunks and deliver them at times that are appropriate for users. Right now, a single multi-page policy might have many sections and paragraphs, each relevant to different services and activities. Yet people who are just casually browsing a website need only a little bit of information about how the site handles their IP addresses, if what they look at is shared with advertisers and if they can opt out of interest-based ads. Those people doesn't[sic] need to know about many other things listed in all-encompassing policies, like the rules associated with subscribing to the site's email newsletter, nor how the site handles personal or financial information belonging to people who make purchases or donations on the site.

When a person does decide to sign up for email updates or pay for a service through the site, then an additional short privacy notice could tell her the additional information she needs to know. These shorter documents should also offer users meaningful choices about what they want a company to do – or not do – with their data. For instance, a new subscriber might be allowed to choose whether the company can share his email address or other contact information with outside marketing companies by clicking a check box.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.


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  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by meustrus on Wednesday October 11 2017, @02:56PM (11 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Wednesday October 11 2017, @02:56PM (#580494)

    It's common in communications like this to alternate genders when the target is ambiguous. It's the more traditionally acceptable alternative to using "them" or invented pronouns like "xe".

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:16PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:16PM (#580508)

    No, it is not common and it is certainly not traditional.
    Quit telling lies. Default catch-all pronoun in the male one; if you don't want to use that, avoid prounouns and use posessives like "the customer's."

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @04:33PM (8 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @04:33PM (#580556)

      I remember the days when the expected way to do it was "he or she" and "his or her." But that is too wordy, I guess for these new people so they'd rather inconvenience everyone else instead of typing more letters. And that isn't even getting into the whole "gender isn't binary," which I still don't understand. I mean, you need a guy with the proper gonads and equipment and a gal with the proper gonads and equipment to make more guys and gals. Sure there are different ways to express that, but it doesn't change the fact that on a biological level you are one or the other.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday October 11 2017, @06:56PM (3 children)

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 11 2017, @06:56PM (#580691) Journal

        That was for a relatively brief period. I think it was common for less than five years. And there was a period when people were inventing pronouns. Which was common for only a short time.

        If you're going to be traditional, then "he" is the gender neutral pronoun. If you're less traditional then there are various ways, the most common of which is to avoid pronouns, but occasionally I'll use the plural form when talking about a single entity, if the other approaches seem too clumsy.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday October 11 2017, @08:16PM (2 children)

          by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday October 11 2017, @08:16PM (#580769) Homepage Journal

          If you're going to be traditional, then "he" is the gender neutral pronoun.

          The biggest problem I have with it is that it can actually mislead the reader:

          I squinted at the shadowy figure, struggling to make out detail in the haze. The figure strode purposefully over to the base of cliff and then he stretched an arm up and began to climb.

          This makes it seem to the reader that perhaps I was able to determine the gender of the shadowy figure and that if so, the figure was a male. If "he" is being used in a gender neutral way, then that is false information.

          --
          If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
          • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday October 11 2017, @11:05PM

            by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 11 2017, @11:05PM (#580838) Journal

            I'm not claiming that the traditional usage is free of problems. It clearly isn't, and I, for one, try to avoid it. But it *is* the traditional usage.

            --
            Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @12:59AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @12:59AM (#580884)

            The misinterpretation is the reader's (e.g., yours). Unless the author states that it's a man, you shouldn't assume that it is; that assumption is... shall we say... your unconscious, sexist bias—it's clearly a microaggression against the author.

            Your whole life, you've misinterpreted the word "he".

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:07PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:07PM (#580705)

        I'm blind, and I think this "color" thing these "sighted" people tell me about is a conspiracy by libtards. I've never experienced sight in my life, so I don't understand it. I think people who claim objects have "color" are mentally ill.

        (Sorry. I know we have at least one user without eyesight here. No offense intended. It's just that the sighted users seem to be blind to other things. The gender-blind leading the gender-blind. It's amazing. But I guess having sight isn't an advantage if 99.99% of the world is blind. If you share things you've observed with this sense that 99.99% of other people don't have, you just come across as crazy, especially if your observations don't fit neatly with either "side" in this supposed debate about things that are just fucking plain as daylight. Then, of course, a bunch of SJWs, who are equally blind and completely misapprehending everything they've ever heard about wavelengths and colors, will make a royal fucking mess out of it all.)

        (Hmm, I probably could have shorted that up by mentioning blind men and an elephant. However, that metaphor has never sat well with me, because it makes fools of the blind only because it presumes that the blind men are ignorant of elephants. Maybe I'm just overthinking it. What the blind men can't tell you, though, is that the elephant is grey, because colors are an SJW conspiracy, as established above.)

        …it doesn't change the fact that on a biological level you are one or the other.

        All except for the fact that at the biological level things are messy and you're just flat out wrong. But here I am trying to convince blind people of the color of the sky again.

        Maybe that right there is true proof of my insanity.

        Keep groping at that elephant. Hope it doesn't stomp you.

      • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday October 11 2017, @10:00PM (2 children)

        by meustrus (4961) on Wednesday October 11 2017, @10:00PM (#580814)

        "He" may be the traditional ambiguous pronoun, but it fails to convey that the gender is ambiguous. acid andy posted a good example of when this might be important [soylentnews.org]. In that case, the better pronoun might be "it", but unfortunately that implies a lack of personhood.

        In technical documentation, it generally doesn't make any difference to the clarity. But it does make a difference for comfort and identity. The difference is small, but considering that we have a massive shortage of competent women in STEM, it's worth trying to solve even small discomfort.

        I would personally avoid pronouns, although that makes it much harder to construct sentences that aren't super awkward. But the alternating-gender strategy is not wholly invented in this one post, and it's not worth getting your knickers in a twist. It's not like a better-qualified male pronoun was passed over for the job.

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        If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @09:41AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @09:41AM (#581053)

          In any case, this is a good rebuttal [soylentnews.org].

          • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Thursday October 12 2017, @03:47PM

            by meustrus (4961) on Thursday October 12 2017, @03:47PM (#581180)

            That's not a rebuttal, it's an assertion [youtube.com]. And I'm not alone in disagreeing that the pronoun "he" can be used without implying the subject is male.

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            If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 11 2017, @05:37PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday October 11 2017, @05:37PM (#580614) Journal

    I thought that was resolved with "shklee [theinfosphere.org]."

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    Washington DC delenda est.