identity.utexas.edu

PrivacyCheck is a data mining tool that analyzes the text of privacy policies.

Latest Version

Version

3.0.1

Update

May 17, 2021

Size

1.35MiB

Developer

identity.utexas.edu

PrivacyCheck Extension

PrivacyCheck automatically summarizes online privacy policies and provides consumers an overview of the ways in which companies use their personal data in a graphical, ‘at-a-glance’ format.

PrivacyCheck v3 adds the ability to (1) find the competitors of an organization with Alexa traffic analysis and compare policies across them, (2) follow privacy policies the user has agreed to and notify the user when policies change, (3) track policies over time and report how often policies change and their trends, (4) automatically find privacy policies in domains, and (5) provide a bird's-eye view of privacy policies the user has agreed to.

Version 2 provided faster results, an assessment of the privacy policy with respect to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), new interface, and top 3 competitors with better privacy policies in the same market sector.

A U.S. Department of Justice report issued July 2014 estimated that roughly 7% American households reported some type of identity theft in the previous year. What do consumers need to know in order to protect themselves and their families from identity theft? Information is key. The more we know about how companies use our personal information, the better prepared we are when deciding whether or not to divulge it. PrivacyCheck is a valuable resource that consumers can use to get an overview of the essential attributes of a company’s online privacy policy in way that is quick and easy to understand.

Federal and state laws require businesses to publicly post a privacy policy stating how they use customers’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Additionally, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has successfully prosecuted companies for deceptive and misleading practices when using consumers’ data in ways contrary to what is stated in their privacy policy. As a result, most companies’ privacy policies are easily accessible online. The problem is that many people do not have time to read these lengthy and sometimes technical documents.

PrivacyCheck is a browser add-on intended to provide consumers an overview of the ways in which companies use their personal data in a graphical, ‘at-a-glance’ format. Similar, currently available resources fall short of this goal due to their lack of comprehensive web coverage. For example, TRUSTe and P3P are sign-up services that require a business to enroll in order to participate, and multiple crowd-sourced efforts only provide information for websites that have been manually checked.

PrivacyCheck surpasses existing add-ons, apps, and certifications by using a Machine Learning algorithm to access the text of any webpage. The user provides the URL for the company’s privacy policy and PrivacyCheck searches the page, returning icons that indicate the level of risk for several types of PII.

Copyright © 2021 The University of Texas at Austin, Center for Identity, All Rights Reserved.

Contact: Razieh Nokhbeh Zaeem, [email protected].

Source Manifest.json

{"update_url": "https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx", "name": "PrivacyCheck", "version": "3.0.1", "manifest_version": 2, "description": "PrivacyCheck is a data mining tool that analyzes the text of privacy policies.", "browser_action": { \t"default_icon": "PrivacyCheck.png", "default_popup": "index.html" }, "content_security_policy": "script-src 'self' 'sha256-EVPGaknyUUDmljj/rm20oYNePvRDBfemSwaAWvyUsA0='; object-src 'self'", "permissions": [ "activeTab" ]}

Download CRX(1.35MiB)

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User reviews

Dan Ross (ID: 000000bef142c8bd) Voted 1 ★ - Updated 04/08/2023 Just installed, doesn't work at all. Can't read policies on big name sites like Whatsapp, Signal, Facebook or apparently any other site. Uninstalling it.

Benny Rowe (ID: 00000072c28d5d3c) Voted 1 ★ - Updated 02/08/2023 Only one star because it's stopped functioning... It was good while it worked, but is apparently unsupported, and has stopped working. I tried reinstalling, but to no avail - when I try to run it, I get this message: "PrivacyCheck™ ran into a problem fetching data from the database or scraping the privacy policy from the website. Some websites include certain HTML features that makes it difficult to extract data. The PrivacyCheck™ team is working to improve this functionality. We apologize for the inconvenience." Apparently they've stopped updating... it happens. Too bad, because when it worked, it was quite useful.

E Dickens (ID: 000000bc3c774965) Voted 2 ★ - Updated 12/13/2018 It does take a while and I wish it would run in the background when you navigate away from the privacy policy page. It stops running even when you switch tabs. Otherwise, I like it.

Mark Housley (ID: 0000009ac0875870) Voted 4 ★ - Updated 11/19/2018 This is an interesting extension. It does take a while and I wish it would run in the background when you navigate away from the privacy policy page. It stops running even when you switch tabs. Otherwise, I like it.

Mike W (ID: 00000012c5018049) Voted 5 ★ - Updated 04/18/2016 Fills a real need. Actually reading privacy policies isn't realistic, but just blindly trusting them isn't good idea either, so it's nice to have software figure it out for you automatically.

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PrivacyCheck