Ask HN: Best Examples of a Privacy Policies and TOS? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best Examples of a Privacy Policies and TOS?

2 pointskiwicopple4 comments

Sorry for the boring question.

I'm looking for any good READABLE examples of companies' PP and ToS. Have you seen any in the past that you thought were good?

Alternatively, if you know a good PP/ToS generator, that would be also very helpful.

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Here is a readable and simple Privacy Policy (PP) from a now-defunct search engine called Cuil (launched in 2008, shut down in 2010):

https://web.archive.org/web/20100830150424/http://www.cuil.c...

Remember that the length of a privacy policy is also a measure of readability. A company may aim to make their PP readable using plain language (rather than legalese jargon) but if that PP takes 20-30 mins to read (as is the case with many popular online services), can it really be called readable? The sheer length of many PPs is also a measure how much data companies collect. One of the reasons why you will never see a short PP from the likes of Facebook, Google etc.

https://www.designboom.com/readers/dima-yarovinsky-visualize...

Here are some other PP policies from search engines with a focus on privacy:

Startpage: https://www.startpage.com/en/privacy-policy/

DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy

Here is the Terms of Use (ToS) for the BBC 'RemArc' project. The ToS is a bit too long (6 A4 pages, although spaced out in large font and bullet points) but easy to read through:

https://github.com/bbcarchdev/Remarc/blob/master/doc/2016.09...

Thank you for the sheer amount of detail and effort you've put into this response. These are all great resources.

The PP's from search engines are great, although perhaps a bit easier when the service doesn't require any personal info like most online products (email + credit card). Still, it's inspiring the lack of data collection they are committing to.

Thank you for these links @open-source-ux. Also a question on your name - do you contribute to OSS with UX suggestions/improvements?

You're welcome.

As for my display name...I used to believe that UX could made an important contribution to OSS, but I no longer really believe that. The model for open source code contributions just doesn't work for visual and interaction design. (Or if it does, I've yet to see a successful example that wasn't an exception rather than the rule). This is, of course, just my opinion :-)

In the past I thought of creating a site that could improve UI/UX contributions to OSS. I was going to call it FOSS Gloss.

There's definitely a need for it, just not really a good mechanism. As you say - yet to see a successful example. I'm always open to contributions for my own OSS project though (supabase.io). If you want to get involved, feel free to open a github issue or email me (find my email in the "humans.txt").

In fact, you already have contributed by answering this Ask HN

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