DataTrust

Our Focus

DataTrust is a central source of information on privacy policies. Privacy Policies, in their current form, are unhelpful at best. DataTrust will provide a website and chrome extension to help better educated users on how companies use their data.

When looking at a policy (if I do actually look), I scan without context. I don't know how any particular website's policies relate to the policy ecosystem as a whole. By getting all policies in the same place, we can better judge an individual policy within the context of the whole. I.e. "Huh, they collect 8x as much data as the average website - maybe we should steer clear and/or tread with caution."
Even if I do look at a policy, I'm often too lost and bored in the verbage to glean anything significant. We need a source of information that is incredibly easy to engage with (a simple, single page web app), as well as easily accessible (chrome extension that provides policy info as you browse, should you choose to click it).
No two policies comply to the same standard notation (for example, Facebook's is an entire website unto itself, whereas your local real estate agency's exists in plain text on a single page). We break each policy up into the 5 standard principles laid out by the Federal Trade Commission 25 years ago, called the Fair Information Practice Principles. Those principles include Notification, Access, Choice, Security and Enforcement.