Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January, 2011

Privacy Icons : Phraud

See! I was supposed to use a word for fraud which starts with P (so, to go well with the other article titles). I did maintain all the constraints - but I cheated blatantly with the word that I used, exploiting the power of human cognition. Cannot similar things be done with privacy icons, to imply something that is not? Hell yeah, the possibility is endless. So what to do when we encounter such cases, or the browser does? We notify the user about the issue, right? A classical preload-notice is cliché - USERS WON'T READ but press "OK, Proceed..." and even if they understand that there's a privacy-concern about this site, they will not have a clear idea (without reading the warning very carefully) exactly what it was about. Some other notification method may also come to your mind, came to mine one too - but none of them were 0% annoying, except for one . Elements are painted-red if a fraud is detected with its corresponding p

Privacy Icons : Preach

Making an HTML specification wouldn't work until it gets rendered on screen of browsers. All HTML can do is to help them by providing the logical details it needs to depict the icon - and then the browser actually has to draw it on the screen. As each browser has their own font color, size, styles preferences for various tags, here also we can expect some variation in privacy-icon-species - till it retains it's meaning for anyone above IQ-80. Simple enough so far, but that's not the reason I've opened a new section . Nowadays, we are pretty used to with the browsers taking care of some of the underlying security risks (potentially harmful site, certificate mismatch, redirection loops etc.), this gives me an idea to ask them for another hand for help... yes, I hope they won't get offended. If a general list of sites which abuse/misuse/cheat the privacy policies, can be maintained, the system can become even more transparent. If a general list is not

Privacy Icons : Plead

Here we are, to cry to momma W3C . Yeah, I know it's kinda too late to make another HTML5 proposition like this - but I'd hate to see a <privacy /> tag in HTML v5. 6.21.3.9 i.e. as a minor update to it. The world(-wide-web) is changing; it's significantly different from the perception of someone's online presence even what it used to be just 3-years before. I will pretend not to be cynic about it, not from any side; rather, it's a big leap forward and an integrated effect of web2.0. And online-privacy is a very large issue and a huge part of it to consider about. True that we can always skip it for later, but isn't it too late already? All I mean to say is that, if a privacy-tag is implemented to be used by the sites, the entire process of enforcing better privacy practice becomes hell lot easier. I don't say it'll reduce people mal-practicing with user data, but in case they would, it'll be easier to detect those spots (how?

Privacy Icons : Preparation

Only two of the four shell-leaks we have put, are widely discussed and are supposed to cause pain in our - erm... forehead, namingly the #2 (partner/barter) and #4 (feds/govt.). But the other two, albeit not too many of us cared about it, but are also equally concerning. It's not necessary to have only one leak though; sites are most likely to (and will) have multiple leaks or all at once (may very well have none, too). The design that we have made up can very well handle (any of) these kind of situations - visually at least. But, is that all? No. Let again take a look at the numbering-scheme of the leaks - they are all in powers of 2 ( 2^[0-3] ). Thus, no matter how you make combinations taking any of them - the sum of the combination-indexes can be represented as a single hexadecimal digit (ranging from 2^0-1=0x0 i.e. no-leak to 2^4-1=0xF i.e all-leaks ). Hence, it's effectively similar to the octal notation of file-system-permissions to determine the type of lea

Privacy Icons : Provision

The privacy as it may sound, might not have same context for every purpose or scenario, not even for the same person. Your social networking self and collaborative self wouldn't have similar concerns about the privacy. Even on social networking platforms, you do treat your Facebook and Twitter differently, don't you? (Don't just say 'no' to prove me wrong - we are under a situation here!) Moderated P : This represents that you will be asked to put your information, some of which are mandatory but all of which is scope-adjustable. You can set your ' circle-of-trust ' to whom you want to expose which of your data ( just me, friends, friends-of-friends, everyone or some other representation). Your choice to hide the details you don't want to reveal, will be respected. The Open P : In this case, you don't have any permission to change the scope of the information that you upload. Your data ' may be ' accessible throughout the w

Privacy Icons : Persistence

Persistence in the sense, how long your data stays in the website's server. The implementation of it should be simple enough to understand from the visual-feedbacks (and having a chance to not have to babble a lot, I'd just present you with the icons). Momentary 7 days to 1 month 1 to 3 months 3 months to 1 year Infinite Persistence Although I'm not happy with the Momentary Persistence logo, I know somebody will come up with a better way to represent it. Next step is to visualize how can we handle the private-data.

Privacy Icons : Perversion

Call it the first step into our privacy icon design - we will essentially draw a circle (and something more). Let's make the outer shell is the wall of our privacy - makes sense, eh? So, where there are walls, there are leaks. And these leaks on the walls can technically be of 4 types; let's tag 'em- Frontal Leak : Nearly each and every company tracks and uses their user data for business strategy, customer services and logistic purposes . A company with many daughter projects may have super-sets of users in many of those projects, and so may use the same data for all the daughter projects, which that member has joined (or availed services). Say for example you, having a Google ID, have joined Gmail, Buzz, YouTube, Calendar, etc. and whenever you join new Google services with that ID, at the moment of first-use/basic-setup you can see your that product-related data (Name, DoB, events etc.) has been fetched from your account already. You didn't give thos

Privacy Icons : Preamble

Let's take a look at Aza's privacy icons' alpha release first. Aza sure made it clear about the curves & corners to consider about; but for the icons, I don't really think he gave his best effort. (Although, I sense conspiracy that he intentionally underperformed so that people can catch up to it, find bugs & get involved;) I find the following problems: Not usable under 64x64 resolution. Too many graphical sprites to get used to. Using color-outline with black-content ... meh! For being more cognition friendly, it uses redundant representation of similar notions (graphic bar && red-color, to negate). Not quite simple. Too many icons to understand one site's privacy policy. You can't just look at 'em an understand - you have to be through (But I have ADHD AADD !). On the websites, how exactly are we going to put all these icons , eh!?! So, let's simplify things a bit. I'd prefer a single-icon to start up with - in c