I’ve previously written about the difficulties of keeping up to date with the current privacy policies of products one is using. Not only are they updated regularly, they are also long and complex. Here Mozilla, the non profit organisation behind Firefox among other things, have created Privacy not Included to help.
Privacy not included is a tool where experts investigates the privacy of different products, and gives clear information both what is said in the policy and what data it collects (permissions, sensors on the device etc.). In addition to pure privacy related analysis, information about the basic security of the product as well as the use of AI is investigated. Even though Privacy not Included does not contain all products around the world, there are lots of them and some of the results are surprising. Enough so to get me to get stuck just reading the analysis while reading up for this post. And if there is a product missing that you would love to see investigated, there is an easy form to request products to be analysed in the future.
For anyone looking for some shocking reads the categories Dating apps and Mental Health apps exist at the time of writing, and the policies of some companies in these areas are truly shocking. So if you have some time on your hands, Privacy not Included is well worth a visit. Either to check out the products you have and use, or to just look around at the warnings for future purchases.