A Personal Privacy Policy
This essay first appeared in Slate's Future Tense blog in July 2015.
Dear Corporation,
You have expressed an interest in collecting personal information about me. (This interest may have been expressed by implication, in case you were attempting to collect such data without notifying me first.) Since you have told me repeatedly that personalization is a great benefit, and that advertising, search results, news, and other services should be tailored to my individual needs and desires, I’ve decided that I should also have my own personalized, targeted privacy policy. Here it is.
While I am glad that (as you stated) my privacy is very important to you, it’s even more important to me. The intent of this policy is to inform you how you may collect, use, and dispose of personal information about me.
By collecting any such information about me, you are agreeing to the terms below. These terms may change from time to time, especially as I find out more about ways in which personal information about me is actually used and I think more about the implications of those uses.
Note: You will be asked to provide some information about yourself. Providing false information will constitute a violation of this agreement.
Scope: This policy covers only me. It does not apply to related entities that I do not own or control, such as my friends, my children, or my husband.
Age restriction and parental participation: Please specify if you are a startup; if so, note how long you’ve been in business. Please include the ages of the founders/innovators who came up with your product and your business model. Please also include the ages of any investors who have asserted, through their investment in your company, that they thought this product or service was a good idea.
Information about you. For each piece of personal information about me that you wish to collect, analyze, and store, you must first disclose the following: a) Do you need this particular piece of information in order for your product/service to work for me? If not, you are not authorized to collect it. If yes, please explain how this piece of information is necessary for your product to work for me. b) What types of analytics do you intend to do perform with this information? c) Will you share this piece of information with anyone outside your company? If so, list each entity with which you intend to share it, and for what purpose; you must update this disclosure every time you add a new third party with which you’d like to share. d) Will you make efforts to anonymize the personal information that you’re collecting? e) Are you aware of the research that shows that anonymization doesn’t really work because it’s easy to put together information from several categories and/or several databases and so figure out the identity of an “anonymous” source of data? f) How long will you retain this particular piece of information about me? g) If I ask you to delete it, will you, and if so, how quickly? Note: by “delete” I don’t mean “make it invisible to others”—I mean “get it out of your system entirely.”
Please be advised that, like these terms, the information I’ve provided to you may change, too: I may switch electronic devices; change my legal name; have more children; move to a different town; experiment with various political or religious affiliations; buy products that I may or may not like, just to try something new or to give to someone else; etc. These terms (as amended as needed) will apply to any new data that you may collect about me in the future: your continued use of personal information about me constitutes your acceptance of this.
And, of course, I reserve all rights not expressly granted to you.
September 2, 2015
Photo by Perspecsys Photos, used without modification under a Creative Commons license.