Privacy Ratings

What are Privacy Policy Ratings?

Your privacy and the protection of your personal information are critical assumptions when shopping on the Internet.  You have every right to expect that the personal and financial information you provide to ebusinesses will be protected and kept confidential.

How does the Safe Shopping Network Rate Privacy Policies?

There are a number of items tested in order to rate a web site’s Privacy Policy.  Please see the SafeShoppingNetwork’s privacy policy scoring standards by clicking here. 

1.  The Web Site clearly exhibits a Privacy Policy (20 Points Possible): 

2.  The Privacy Policy is easy to find (5 Points Possible):

3.  The Web Site will not give personal information to any other entity. (20 Points Possible):

4.  The Web Site will not rent personal information to any other entity (20 Points  Possible):

5.  The Web Site will not sell personal information to any other entity (20 Points Possible): 

6.  The consumer is invited and has access to a link which allows them to question the ecommerce business regarding some part of the privacy policy (5 Points Possible): 

7.  There is a statement in the policy that covers child protection (5 Points Possible): 

8.  There is a clear statement that allows the consumer to Opt-Out of emails and other market/sales tools (5 Points Possible): 

9.  The policy states what information is collected and for what purposes (5 Points Possible): 

The chart below shows how 200 randomly selected web sites were scored using the SafeShoppingNetwork privacy policy standards.  The large bar at the left of the chart shows that more than half of all web sites exhibit or show no privacy policy at all.

How do I know what “Good” and “Bad” Privacy Policy Scores are?

When you look at the SafeShoppingNetwork Web Site Privacy Policy Score, you are seeing the total score that results from the addition of the individual 9 item scores listed above.  The maximum Total Privacy Policy Score possible is 105 points. 

If you look at the chart below, you can see how web sites generally score when tested for Privacy Policy Ratings.  The SafeShoppingNetwork excludes those sites that score below 70 points from our listings. 

You can see from the chart that out of about 200 sites randomly selected and Privacy Policy tested, most (about 130 of the 200 tested) had no Privacy Policy posted on their web site.  These sites simply did not pass our minimum Privacy Policy Standards.  You can also see that most sites earn Privacy Policy Scores between 20 and 90 points.  The real champs, from our test data, are those that score 90 or above.  In the case of this test sample, that’s about 20 sites or 20 percent of all sites tested.  The top 20 percent, that is.

Why are these findings so important?
The Privacy Policy scores should be of extreme importance to you. Privacy Policy ratings indicate whether or not specific websites are working to protect the information you trust them with. This includes your credit card information, your phone number and address and any other private personal information you give them. 

You can easily see for yourself how well a site performs by looking at the meter bar. Nowhere else on the Internet will you find such objective and technical findings. There are many well-known sites out there that have a good exterior but do little to protect your personal information. Some site owners have little or no regard for the consumer's need for private information protection.

Don't be fooled by "Awards" and "Citations".
As you travel the web, you'll inadvertently hit any number of websites that display different kinds of awards and citations for just having a Privacy Policy.  Those companies issuing such awards do not objectively evaluate the website policy nor do they issue awards based on shopper evaluations. The SafeShoppingNetwork does!

The SafeShoppingNetwork commitment is to continuous Internet quality improvement.  We are constantly looking for ways to improve our test technologies, our score reporting, and web site quality.