Instead of reading through complicated text that lets you know what a website’s privacy policy is, startup Disconnect.me is developing a set of icons in partnership with Mozilla and leading privacy experts. This work-in-progress aims to simplify privacy policies by creating an iconography for websites to use. These would let users know exactly what to expect, like whether a site sells personal information for third-party use or how long it stores your data. The NY Times notes that:

Web users can install a browser plug-in, available for now only on the Firefox browser made by Mozilla. Once the plug-in is installed, visited Web sites will be marked with a series of icons summing up their privacy terms. The experiment is part of a nascent movement by privacy advocates to educate Internet users about the spread of their personal data online and to offer tools that allow them to control who sees what.

Disconnect.me