E.G Goes in on Facebook....

One notable flaw in the ointment is that the PrivacyScore is based almost entirely on the policies published by the apps and tracking companies. As we’ve seen more than few times, companies occasionally end up violating their own privacy policies – sometimes accidentally, and sometimes accidentally on purpose.

Brock says they’re still trying to work out how to include actual compliance with policies and things like data breaches into his rating system, as well as how to deal with Do Not Track opt outs that are really Do Not Target Me With Ads But Continue to Collect My Information opt outs.

Is PrivacyScore a cure for Facebook’s app afflictions? Not really. It’s more like an over-the-counter medicine; it relieves the more obvious symptoms without removing the underlying cause. Still, the relief is welcome. Maybe one day it will force the big app publishers to clean up their acts, and push some of the more evil developers out of the app game entirely.