New software analyzes hard-to-understand privacy policies

Have you ever tried to read a website's privacy policy only to give up after slogging through paragraphs and paragraphs of dense, lawyerly language? Privacy-focused companies Disconnect and TRUSTe have released a new browser add-on that attempts to translate those policies into easy-to-understand terms.

The companies' Privacy Icons software, released for a pay-what-you-want fee, analyzes websites' privacy policies, breaking them down into nine categories, including location tracking, do-not-track browser request compliance, and data retention policies. The software then displays, as a browser add-on, nine color-coded icons, with green, yellow and red icons signifying the level of concern about the website's privacy policy in each area.

More transparency on privacy policies is needed, said Casey Oppenheim, co-CEO at Disconnect, which also makes software that blocks online tracking requests.

"The end goal is to help individuals regain control of their personal information online," he said. "As a means to that end, we definitely hope that this project will inspire companies to improve their data practices and compete, even more, on the basis of privacy and security."