Reading privacy polices is an awful experience. They are gigantic walls of text that are designed to be terrible to look at, and I believe it's why most people do not read them. So, rather than repeating myself over and over again by just telling people to read the policies, I thought I’d offer a new tool to help visualize things.
Each button is a category that was heavily based on Apple’s developer documentation on their App Store privacy guidelines. I went with this as a base because it’s a really solid foundation in understanding what these things are, and given that (in the USA), the iPhone is the most popular phone, I thought it would make sense to use language and visuals that Apple already provides. Here are the resources to Apple’s resources if you want additional context:
Apple Developer App Privacy Guidelines: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/app-privacy-details/
The buttons are cycled. When clicked, they change from grey, blue, orange, and then red. I have left these colors up to your own interpretation. If you want a guide on how I do it, though, you can watch me use it over on the privacy policies explained channel! I also made a blog post that goes into more detail here.
Under each category icon is the name of the category. If you click this, you will be shown a popup that contains some more information about that category. This includes a summary of the data type, what they might want it for, and then some benefits and consequences of that data being collected. At the bottom, there are search terms that you can utilize to help skim a privacy policy, in case you just want a quick glance to see if a company does collect or use a certain data type.
If you are looking for a version focused on accessibility, rodak from the forum created a version for you! It honestly works a lot better than mine, so I highly recommend you check it out: https://rodak123.github.io/PrivacyVisualizerRedesign/