Privacy Ratings

At home and in schools and districts, consumers, parents, and educators make decisions about privacy based on their specific needs. The Common Sense privacy evaluation process is designed to support families and educators as they make informed choices about the media and technology they use themselves and with their kids at home or students in the classroom. Our expert reviewers read the privacy policies and terms of use for thousands of products in order to evaluate those tools across key privacy concerns and provide the same rating across different types of evaluations. Each privacy evaluation is assigned one of the following privacy ratings to help support making informed decisions:

Meets our minimum requirements for privacy and security practices

To earn our highest Pass privacy rating a product’s policies must say:

No selling data
No third-party marketing
No targeted advertisements
No third-party tracking
No tracking across apps
No profiling for commercial purposes

Does not meet our recommendations for privacy and security practices

If a product earns a Warning privacy rating that means:

The product is unclear or says they engage in one or more worse privacy practices that are prohibited in the Pass rating criteria above.

Does not have a privacy policy and should not be used

If a product earns a Fail privacy rating that means:

The product does not have a privacy policy, or the privacy policy is not sufficient, because it does not disclose any details about the worse privacy practices prohibited in the Pass rating criteria above.

Learn more about the rating questions used to determine a product's rating.

Different Types of Evaluations

We have three different types of evaluations to meet the unique needs of parents, educators, and consumers in order to help them make smart choices about privacy based on their specific concerns. They are called our Quick, Basic, and Full privacy evaluations.

Quick Evaluations

The majority of products intended for kids and families receive a Quick Evaluation, which is meant to help parents, educators, and consumers make quick decisions about privacy. Quick evaluations produce quick privacy ratings to help answer one of the most important privacy questions about a product, which is whether the company is making money from your data. This type of rating is based on only six (6) rating questions but still displays a Pass, Warning, or Fail rating badge with a checkmark or warning icon for answers to each of the rating questions. However, a quick rating does not display an Overall Score, or Evaluation Concern categories, because these both require a more comprehensive Basic or Full privacy evaluation to compare products across multiple privacy issues for use in different contexts.

Basic Evaluations

The most popular products intended for kids and students receive a Basic Evaluation, which is a more comprehensive evaluation meant to help parents, educators, and consumers make more informed decisions about the different privacy issues that matter most to them. Basic evaluations are more comprehensive than Quick evaluations because they help answer the most important privacy questions about a product across ten different Evaluation Concern categories. This type of evaluation is based on thirty (30) basic questions and displays a Pass, Warning, or Fail rating badge. Basic evaluations also display an Overall Score to more easily compare different products across multiple privacy issues for use in different contexts. However, basic evaluations do not answer all the possible questions of our most comprehensive Full Evaluation of a product. Basic evaluations still display an overall score and concern scores based on answers to only the basic evaluation questions. Basic evaluations can still be easily compared to Quick, Basic, or Full evaluations because they share the same Privacy Rating. However Basic evaluations can also be compared with other Basic and Full evaluations using the additional details not available in Quick ratings including: Overall Score, a subset of Evaluation Concerns, and a subset of the Standard Privacy Report.

Full Evaluations

Full evaluations are a 155‐point inspection of all the possible comprehensive privacy and security evaluation questions about a product, including all questions covered in our Basic Evaluations. The Full Evaluation is our most comprehensive evaluation that we provide and is meant to help parents, educators, consumers, experts, researchers, and policy makers make the most informed decision possible about all the different types of privacy issues that matter most to them. Full evaluations display a Pass, Warning, or Fail rating badge, and also display an overall score and concern scores to easily compare different products across multiple privacy issues for use in different contexts. Full evaluations can still be easily compared to Quick, Basic, or Full evaluations because they share the same Privacy Rating. However Full evaluations can also be compared with Basic evaluations using the additional details not available in Quick ratings including: Overall Score, a subset of Evaluation Concerns, and a subset of the Standard Privacy Report.

Overall Score

Only comprehensive Basic and Full Evaluations display an Overall Evaluation Score on the same thirty (30) evaluation questions that are a representative sample of the most important privacy, safety, security, and compliance related issues. A higher score (up to 100%) means the product provides more transparent and comprehensive privacy policies with better practices that protect user data across a wide range of privacy issues. The overall score is not an average of the individual Evaluation Concern category scores, but rather is a percentage of the number of points earned for answering basic evaluation questions. Products that receive a high overall score are not necessarily problem-free, because they can receive either a Pass or Warning rating depending on how they answer the most important rating questions questions. Similarly, products with a low overall score are not necessarily unsafe, because they can receive either a Pass or Warning rating.

For example, here is a privacy rating with an overall score:

The score is best used as an indicator of how much additional work a person will need to do to make an informed decision about a product. This use is directly related to the core work driving the evaluations: to help people make informed decisions about a product with less effort. The higher the number, the less effort required to make an informed and appropriate decision.

Evaluation Concerns

The Basic or Full privacy evaluation process breaks down a product's overall score into several concern categories based on a subset of various evaluation questions that can be used to compare similar products and quickly identify particular strengths and weaknesses. Each evaluation concern category has its own concern scores with easy to understand icons to help provide a focused understanding about the different privacy‐, security‐, safety‐, and compliance‐related issues that compose a particular concern for an application or service.

The concerns ultimately provide parents and teachers with more relevant information to make a more informed decision about whether to use a particular application or service based on the concerns that matter most to their kids and students. Each privacy concern category below is organized by the most important and easy-to-understand privacy practices in order to quickly evaluate how an application or service compares to similar products.

Concern Scores

The ratings and scores for each evaluation concern category are described below with a range of "best" to "poor":

Best (81-100)
Good (61-80)
Average (41-60)
Fair (21-40)
Poor (0-20)

Products that score a "poor" are not necessarily unsafe, but they have a higher number of privacy problems than the "average" product. Similarly, products that score "best" are not necessarily problem-free, but have relatively fewer problems compared with other products.