“Privacy policies clearer thanks to icons? It is possible.” With this slogan the Italian Data Protection Authority launches a contest in order to find solutions which – by the usage of icons, symbols or other graphical solutions – makes privacy policies easier, clearer and immediately more comprehensible. Shortly, they are making sure that they are truly useful and appropriate to the purpose for which they were intended.

Policies used by private companies, public bodies, experts, websites, social networks, search engines and tech platforms are frequently too long, complex and so not useful in order to reply to their essential function, which is to inform users on the use that will be done with their personal data, and, consequently, to enable them to freely and consciously express any consent to the processing, whether it is marketing, commercial profiling or the communication of certain information to third parties. 

The Authority asks the developers, experts, lawyers, designers, students and to who is interest in, to send a set of symbols or icons which are able to represent an amount of elements which, according to article 13 and 14 of the European Regulation, shall be included into the policy. 

Proposals must be sent until the 30th of May of 2021.

The Authority, at its sole discretion, will choose among three dataset of symbols and icons which it will consider the most efficient and it will make them available on its website for anyone who wants to use it, by indicating the name of the author.

SOURCE: AUTORITA’ PER LA PROTEZIONE DEI DATI DELL’ITALIA – GPDP