Stanford's "Privicons" "email privacy tool" released
http://j.mp/sOUhE0 (Stanford) "To convey these signals, Privicons uses a vocabulary of icons that clearly communicate email senders' privacy expectations. With the new Privicons plugin for Chrome, Gmail users can select from a list of these icons and attach them to their emails, unobtrusively but noticeably. (A Firefox plugin is next.) When recipients see these icons, we expect that many of them, motivated by neighborliness and their understanding of social norms, will comply with their peers' wishes and expectations." - - - I am basically not impressed by such schemes. My suspicion is that such "signals" will be overused by senders (often for bad reasons) and largely ignored by recipients (often for good reasons). I'll elaborate on this later as appropriate. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
