Answer to Question 1
Very little attention has been paid to measuring the strength of privacy policies for individual companies, comparing them to other companies, and understanding how privacy policies have changed over time at a specific company. However, researchers have developed a measure of privacy policies by applying 10 privacy policy principles when reviewing policies. These principles are as follows:
Can the privacy policy be easily found, reviewed, and understood by users?
Does the privacy policy fully disclose how personal information will and will not be used by the organization? Is information about users ever shared or sold without users' explicit permission?
Can users decide if they want to participate?
Can users decide and actively indicate that they agree to be profiled, tracked, or targeted?
Can users decide how and if their sensitive information is shared?
Are users able to change any information that they input about themselves?
Can users decide who can access their information?
Are users notified promptly if their information is lost, stolen, or improperly accessed?
Can users easily report concerns and get answers?
Do users receive a copy of all disclosures of their information?
The dimensions are measured on a four-point scale from 0 to 4 (0 meaning the privacy policy fails to meet the criterion and 4 indicating the criterion was fully achieved).
Answer to Question 2
In 2016, the privacy environment has turned decidedly against American firms like Facebook, Google, and others whose business model requires near unfettered use of personal information to support advertising revenues. Five E.U. nations (Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, and Belgium) have initiated a series of coordinated investigations into these firms' privacy and data policies. For instance, in 2015 Belgium sued Facebook for collecting and processing data without user consent, or explaining how it would use the information. France's privacy data-protection regulator ordered Google to expand the right to be forgotten to the entire world, not just to Europeans. Dutch, German, and Belgian authorities are investigating Facebook's combining of data from its services like Instagram and WhatsApp to target advertising, and its use of its Like buttons for tracking browsing habits across the entire Web.