What if it was possible to rate a business based on its privacy policy?
This is what Little Syster offers, a young French shoot that has just
released a mobile application.
Between the controversy over the
next terms of use for WhatsApp and the introduction of the new
transparency policy of the App Store (Apple), this year 2021 begins from
the angle of privacy protection. And it is in this context that a young
French company is launching its Little Syster application on Android in
private beta.
Respond to a concrete need
According to a study from May 2019,
84% of European citizens believe they have no control over their
personal data. Little Syster wants to be a game changer. The company
thus seeks to assess the ethics of the practices of digital services in
terms of the protection of privacy.
Like the nutriscore and the
ecoscore, the company gives an A to E rating to a digital application or
service, after evaluating the collection, use, security and sharing of
users' personal information. More than a long exhaustive list, it is
then a question of highlighting clear and accessible information to the
general public.
Concretely, once Little Syster is installed, it
reviews all the other applications present on the smartphone. Each is
then assigned an average score according to the analysis criteria.
The
transparency of information counts for 30% of the final mark against
20% for the use of information. The control of security risks represents
15% of this score while the partner choice policy amounts to 35%.
As an example Protonmail, Olvid and MeWe get an A rating. Signal, Doctolib, and Brave received a B. Perhaps more surprisingly, Firefox, is rated only C.
A slightly young and perfectible application
Regarding the
reasons for the rating given to Mozilla's browser, Little Syster
explains that while the foundation shows excellent practices in terms of
controlling security risks, other points such as the choice of
partners, transparency of information and the respectful use of data
should be reviewed. Faced with this meager information, however, we
remain a little unsatisfied.
Moreover, since this project is
still very young, many applications are still being rated. This is the
case with the services of Facebook and Google (although we already have a
small idea of the result), as well as other popular applications such
as Netflix, Spotify, Twitter, Shazam or Amazon.
Finally, Little
Syster explains that it is an independent entity. The company is
nonetheless funded by companies wanting to get a rating for improving
their policy, hoping their service will be listed as an alternative to a
lower rated one. The company also has a few shareholders.
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