Informativa sulla privacy per etictags
etictags di Utente Firefox 12840880
Etictags privacy policy
Willingness for clarity
As a proof of the absolute willingness of privacy and transparency, this document explains the data collected or planned to be collected by browser extension and the exact purpose of the collection aligned with the mission statement of etictags.
This document is not written as a legal, hardly readable document but as a simple explanation of the basic principles and the way these principles are actually implemented for data collection. The objective of this document is more about being understood than covering the legal aspects.
A privacy policy aligned with the mission of Etictags
Etictags is about helping the users to buy saner, greener, more local and more fairtrade products while maintaining the freedom of choice for the consumer. If we want to summarise it, it's about helping consumers being conscious about the products they are consuming, promoting responsible consumption behaviours.
Two main principles guiding the data collection policy
The first principle that is guiding etictags data collection policy is "you can't improve what you can't measure". We have a constant willingness to improve the quality of etictags guidance and increase the impact of etictags in the consumer's choice.
The second principle is the willingness of etictags to help “positive producers and merchants” to improve their value propositions and attract new consumers with compelling offerings of “positive products”.
Etictags assigns an anonymous identifier to each user
Etictags assigns an anonymous identifier (AID) build from a timestamp and a random chain of characters to each user. This AID is stored on your PC, linked with your Chrome account if any. This AID is used to distinguish the behaviors of different users. For example, such identifier helps to distinguish between 10 users viewing a tag once or a single user viewing 10 times the same tag. It is standard practice on the Internet and is similar to the usage of cookies.
While the EU regulation requires that cookies are renewed on an annual basis, the etictags AID is renewed on a monthly basis in order to guarantee further level of anonymity. At the contrary of Google and Facebook, the objective of etictags is not to track individual but to proceed with collective measurements.
When the browser is started, etictags extension sends a message to etictags server so that the number of daily active users can measured.
Etictags does not make use of any other personal identifier : no email address, no mobile number, no home address, no bank account, etc....
Etictags collects domain names on standard websites
Each time you visit a standard website, etictags chrome extension sends the domain name (e.g. www.example.com) to the etictags server. It however does not send the full URL (e.g. www.example.com/page1.html).
Etictags thus does never track the full user journey through all the sites.
Etictags collects the domain name in order to guide the “positive producers and merchants”, providing the list of top sites where they can promote their “positive products”, taking etictags community as a reference.
Etictags collects URLs and number of tags on tagged websites
Etictags chrome extension has a different behavior for the websites it is configured to tag. Each time you visit a tagged website, etictags chrome extension sends the URL with the number of product items tagged in the different colours.
The intention behind this data collection is on one hand to detect the changes of the website structure and ensure that the tagging is always active and on the other hand to measure the actual number of tags appearing.
If a website is changing the structure of its website, the server tracking will detect it and notify the etictags team that it’s time to adapt the tagging rules according to a new structure.
The measurements of number of products actually tagged will also allow etictags team to qualify the evolutions of merchants. Do they sell more green products ? Do they sell less red products ?
Etictags collects product descriptions and prices of tagged products
When a product is tagged (positive or negative), the product description and the product price is sometimes transferred to etictags server for further analysis.
The intention is to proceed with detailed analysis and help “positive producers and merchants” to better differentiate or align their prices on the market prices.
In the future, the collection of prices will also help etictags to recommend “positive products” as alternatives to “negative products” in the same price range.
Etictags collects data about the tags interactions
When you bring your mouse close to a tag, a larger tag appears in overlay, presenting you the reason for the tag and proposing a link. Etictags chrome extension transfers the different events (tag appears, click on link) to etictags server.
The intention is to measure the impact of Etictags and the interest raised by the tags.
Etictags collects cart content
For websites of merchant, etictags chrome extension is planned to collect the cart content and sends it to etictags server.
The intention is to measure the actual impact of etictags and its recommendation. Do etictags actually impact the consumer behaviour ? Which kind of tags ? On which kinds of products ? This is the nature of the questions we wish to answer in order to improve the concept continuously.
Moreover, the aggregated content of the carts can also help to build reports helping “positive producers and merchants” to figure out the actual cart content of the consumers, guiding them in the development of products in new segments or in the way to promote their products.
Etictags never provides brut data
Etictags helps “positive producers and merchants”. These are selected based on “ethical committee” inside etictags. They can only access reports focusing on their specific areas.
Etictags always provides reports addressing aggregated data. No list of records is provided to anyone.
Conclusion
We hope this privacy policy is crystal clear and helped you to actually understand the list of data collected by etictags and the purpose of this data collection.
Thank you for the interest you bring to etictags and for the time you took to understand our policy!