Privacy Bird® Tour

Chirping bird tells you if your preferences are met

Privacy Bird searches automatically for privacy policies at every web site you visit. You can tell Privacy Bird about your personal privacy preferences, and it will notify you as to whether each site's policies match your privacy preferences by displaying a bird icon in the top right of your browser's title bar. You can click on the bird at any time to open the Privacy Bird menu.

The singing green bird appears when Privacy Bird determines that a web site's privacy policy matches your preferences. If the site contains images or other embedded content that do not have privacy policies associated with them, or that have privacy policies that do not match your preferences, a red exclamation point will appear next to the notes in the bird's song bubble.

The angry red bird appears when Privacy Bird determines that a web site's privacy policy conflicts with your preferences.

The uncertain yellow bird appears when Privacy Bird is unable to fetch or read a privacy policy from the web site you are visiting. The policy must be encoded according to the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) standard in order for the Privacy Tool to fetch it. If the policy contains an error or if it has expired or is not valid, the yellow bird will appear. While a web page is loading and Privacy Bird is in the process of looking for the accompanying privacy policy, the yellow bird will appear to be turning its head from side to side.

The sleeping gray bird appears when Privacy Bird has been disabled.

Privacy preference settings give you more control

When you click on the bird icon and select My Preferences, a menu appears that allows you to set your Privacy Bird preferences.

Privacy preferences

The Privacy Preference Settings panel allows you to configure Privacy Bird according to your personal privacy preferences. When Privacy Bird encounters a web site that does not match your privacy preferences, the red bird icon appears in your browser title bar.

The simplest way to select privacy preference settings is to select from one of the pre-configured settings -- low, medium, or high. These settings indicate the number of web site practices that will trigger privacy warnings. When you select one of these settings, check marks will appear next to the specific items that will trigger warnings under that setting.

If you are not entirely satisfied with one of the pre-configured settings, you can click on the check boxes to add additional warning triggers or to remove warning triggers.

Privacy Bird can trigger warnings at sites that use the following information in various ways that you may not find acceptable: health or medical information, financial or purchase information, personally identifiable information, non-personally identifiable information.

Learn about web site privacy policies

When you click on the bird icon and select About This Site, a menu appears that allows you to learn more about the privacy policies at the web site you are currently visiting.

Policy Summary

The Policy Summary item displays a summary of a web site's privacy policy and an indication as to whether or not that policy matches your personal privacy preferences.

At the top of the Policy Summary panel is a short "privacy check" section. This section indicates whether or not the policy matches your personal privacy preferences. At sites that match your preferences, the background color of the panel is pale green. At sites that do not match your preferences, the background color is pink. In addition, at sites that do not match your preferences, this section contains a bulleted list of conflict points between your preferences and the site's policy.

The second section of the Policy Summary panel is the privacy policy summary itself. This summary includes a list of policy statements, information about the data described in each statement, information about whether the site allows you to access your data, information about contacting the site, and information about resolving privacy-related disputes. At the end of the policy summary there is a link to the web site's full privacy. The full policy is the site's privacy policy written in their own words. If the site provides it, the policy summary also includes a link to information about how to ask the site not to use your information for certain purposes.