The Policy Summary panel provides a summary of a web site's privacy policy and an indication as to whether or not that policy matches your personal privacy preferences.
Open the Policy Summary panel by clicking on the bird icon and selecting About This Site from the menu. Then select Policy Summary.
You will see a series of plus and minus signs along the left side of the Policy Summary. Clicking on a plus sign results in the display of more detailed information. Clicking on a minus sign hides some of the detail and results in a shorter summary. The plus/minus sign in the top left corner causes the entire Policy Summary to be expanded or collapsed.
At the top of the Policy Summary panel is a short "privacy check" section. This section indicates whether or not the policy matches your personal privacy preferences. At sites that match your preferences, the background color of the panel is pale green. At sites that do not match your preferences, the background color is pink. In addition, at sites that do not match your preferences, this section contains a bulleted list of conflict points between your preferences and the site's policy.
The second section of the Policy Summary panel is the privacy policy summary itself. This summary includes a list of policy statements, information about the data described in each policy statement, information about whether the site allows you to access your data, information about contacting the site, and information about resolving privacy-related disputes. At the end of the policy summary there is a link to the web site's full privacy policy.
Web sites often divide their privacy policies into several statements. Each statement describes a group of data that each get processed in similar ways. For example, a site might have one statement that describes the data it collects automatically (what web pages you visit, what time you visit them, etc.) and another statement that describes the data you submit when you fill out an order form.
Some policy statements inclue a brief explanation of the statement immediatly below the statement title. This explanation is written in the web site's own words.
P3P policies can describe one or more of seventeen predefined categories of data (purchase information, demographics, etc.), or they can describe specific pieces of data (first name, last name, etc.). This section of the policy summary includes a description of each of the categories of data specified by the web site, as well as any specific pieces of data mentioned in the site's policy. The site may label some of this data as "optional" if it is not required in order to obtain services from the web site.
Some sites may collect data that does not fit into any of the predefined data categories. Any description of this data provided by the site is displayed in this section as well.
While some data such as which web sites you visit and what type of computer you use is collected automatically, most data can only be collected if you fill out a form and type it in. Some sites may indicate that they collect a very large number of different types of data. Often these sites have many web pages that include forms for different types of services. Only a small amount of data is collected with any one of these forms.
P3P policies can describe one or more of twelve predefined uses of data. This section of the policy summary includes a description of each of these data uses specified by the web site. The site may indicate that you may opt-out of some of these uses, or that they may occur only if you opt-in.
Some sites may use data in ways that do not fit into any of the predefined data uses. Privacy Bird® considers such uses to be unknown and warns you whenever you visit such a site. Any description of these uses provided by the site is displayed in this section as well.
P3P policies can indicate one or more of six types of companies or people that might use your data. This section of the policy summary lists these data recipients.The site may indicate that you may opt-out of having your data shared with some of these recipients, or that your data may be shared only if you opt-in.
Almost every web site indicates that data will be used by "This web site and its agents." Agents may include Internet Service Providers, system administrators, advertising companies, or other people or companies hired by the web site. However, in order to be considered an agent in this context, these people or companies must follow the web site's privacy policy and use the data only for the purposes the web site requested.
Sometimes individuals are interested in finding out what information a company keeps about them in their records. Some companies are willing to make some or all of this information available to individuals upon request. This section of the policy summary indicates whether or not the web site will grant requests from individuals to access their information. If a web site indicates that it will grant such requests, it should provide information about how to make a request in its full privacy policy.
This section of the policy summary provides contact information for the web site.
This section of the policy summary provides information about how to resolve privacy-related disputes with the web site. Many sites provide a customer service center that can help resolve disputes. In addition, many web site subscribe to a privacy seal program that may be able to assist you with a dispute. And many web sites are also bound to follow specific privacy laws that have provisions for resolving privacy-related disputes.
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