The Case for Standardization of Privacy Policy Formats

Sheila F Anthony, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 7/1/2001)

In 1995, when the Commission first became involved in the public debate on online privacy, it encouraged industry members to come up with an effective self-regulatory scheme. The general industry response was to create long and complicated privacy policies that are difficult for consumers to read and understand. In my view, consumers are not much better off today with incomprehensible privacy policies than they were five or six years ago when there were no privacy policies. A standardized format for privacy policies, much like the food label required by the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act(1) or the EnergyGuides required by The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (EPCA),(2) would allow consumers to quickly assess whether a particular site's privacy policy satisfies their privacy goals