PolicyPro wins Rep. Alma Adams’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in North Carolina’s 12th District

When asked what inspired the creation of PolicyPro, the students said, “Every year, there are millions of data breaches that affect billions of people around the world, leaking valuable data about people. In fact, in 2023 so far, there have been 612.4 million data breaches and 4.5 billion compromised records. Both of us and our families have been affected by these data breaches earlier this year. This led us to research deeper into the causes and prevention systems for these dangerous breaches. We learned that privacy policies, terms and conditions, and other fine prints on agreements often have descriptions of how the data will be used. Therefore, it is critical to thoroughly understand what the agreements foreclose about your personal data. Personally, we have never completely read through privacy policies. We would just quickly glance at a few words and click accept. This practice, however, is very dangerous and can lead to data hacking and breaches, as we have seen first-hand.  

It is important to know what you are agreeing to when you come across a policy. We were not alone in this harmful, yet exceedingly common practice. When surveyed, none of our friends, family members, or teachers said that they read terms and conditions or privacy policies; they were blindly accepting agreements about how their personal data would be used, without understanding the consequences. These agreements are found everywhere including online policies, terms and conditions, paperwork for loans or businesses, contracts, and many more. We researched further and found that only 9% of people read fine print, leaving 91% of people accepting privacy policies blindly. In fact, this number is even higher at younger ages; only 3% of adults between 18 and 35 read agreements. This mass trend is due to the lengthy, mundane characteristics of a privacy policy. In fact, 89% of people say that the reason they ignore policy agreements is because they are too long, confusing, and tedious to read.  

Therefore, we decided to develop a solution to this ubiquitous problem, helping to reduce harmful, yet potentially preventable personal data leaks and breaches. We harnessed technology and innovation to create our app PolicyPro, which summarizes lengthy, multi-page agreements to concisely highlight the important points that the user should be aware of. Now, people can easily understand what they are agreeing to in regards to their personal data, allowing them to be aware of potential threats and suspicious agreements.”