/honesty.txt

[adamcbrewer]

I attended Mozfest this year in London and attended a few talks on privacy. I wrote a small blog about the point I'm trying to make, but in short I think a small text file should be included on sites that could contain what the developers themselves know about the user data they're tracking or storing on the server, i.e. what they've personally programmed themselves, but in layman's terms.

There might not be those who agree, but I think it's worth brainstorming about…

[luanmuniz]

I think it's an excellent idea, but you're doing it wrong. Here in h5bp, we have humans.txt which has a similar approach, but it is actually another project. You could create this honesty.txt with the same approach, is an informative website with explanations of why this should be and a standard syntax. Use the site as a base humans.txt http://humanstxt.org/

[adamcbrewer]

Thanks @luanmuniz, I agree with you on having it as it's own separate project, like humanstxt.org.

However, I also wanted some feedback from the developer community from one of its biggest, ongoing projects, which would very likely be the place to be implemented if the idea ever took off.

[LukeAskew]

How do you imagine this distinguished from a "Privacy Policy" page?

[adamcbrewer]

I have yet to read about the 'intent' of keeping/storing data of an app. My point was if there was any separation of concerns between the developer and the owner, the developer – to the best of his/her knowledge – could put down exactly what he helped contribute towards with regards to this intention.

For example:

Developer: Joe Bloggs

This site/app stores your Facebook authentication details, such as name, email, list
of friends, which aren't (to the best of my knowledge) being used right now,
but they are stored.

Likewise, I helped create the user's account delete function, which does not
actually delete your account. It's more of a soft-delete and we also retain
your email address on our mailing list.

Maybe something like that?

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

I fail to see the benefit on this

[necolas]

^ same. This should be in a Privacy Policy not a file that no one will ever remember to maintain.

[adamcbrewer]

I think the gist of it was really about openness from the point of view of the developers that contributed – who else would know better than then about the ins-and-outs of a site. @necolas It's not solely about maintainability either, really just an open paragraph to those who might be interested.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. I think the suggestion by @luanmuniz – to create a standalone project – was the best option if something like this was to go ahead.