
Ask HN: Should We Create a Badge for Software That Does Not Track You? - jehna1
If there was a badge that indicates you&#x27;re not tracked, it would affect my behaviour when choosing a software service.<p>If big enough user group became aware of this, maybe it would add pressure for larger corporations to think about their users&#x27; privacy
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neilv
The Free Software Foundation's "Respects Your Freedom" certification program
[1] seems related.

The FSF's definition of freedom here might not be quite what everyone has in
mind, but the program is worth looking at and considering.

[1] [https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-
your-f...](https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom)

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jehna1
"Respects your freedom" badge seems to be hardware-related. This is exactly
what we'd need for the software products too!

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HocusLocus
Q: Should We Create a Badge for Software That Does Not Track You?

A: YES! A unique one for each person.

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quickthrower2
Funny and evil.

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jraph
The F-Droid store on Android does that.

If nothing is mentioned, the application does not track.

For applications with tracking, a tracking anti-feature label is shown under
the section "This app has features you may not like".

Other labels exist, like "has non-free addons", or "the app contains non-free
parts upstream".

For an example of such a label:
[https://f-droid.org/fr/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/](https://f-droid.org/fr/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/)

It makes me think that a catalog like OpenFoodFacts but for software with such
anti-features listed could be an idea.

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mvid
There is no way to enforce it, though. Seems like the “organic” label

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quickthrower2
What the?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification)

Sure people can lie and mislead to get one, but they can do that with any
certification to some extent.

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surfsvammel
I like it!

Badge or not. I believe and hope that we will see less tracking in the future.
Consumers will change this directly and indirectly through policy.

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jehna1
> I believe and hope that we will see less tracking in the future

As a consumer I sure hope so too, but I'm only seeing increase on different
methods of tracking at the corporate level; tracking software is becoming more
cheap, accessible and easier to use

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gnicholas
This would be great. I'm in the process of putting together a blog post that
explains that the reason our software isn't free (like many other browser
plugins) is that we're not doing lousy stuff with your browsing history.

