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20 Hours a Month Reading Privacy Policies
Barence sends word of research out of Carnegie Mellon University calling for changes in the way Web sites present privacy policies. The researchers, one of whom is an EFF board member, calculated how long it would take the average user to read through the privacy policies of the sites visited in a year. The answer: 200 hours, at a hypothetical cost to the US economy of $365 billion, more than half the financial bailout package. Every year. The researchers propose that, if the industry can't make privacy policies easier to read or skim, then federal intervention may be needed. This resulted in the predictable cry of outrage from online executives. Here's the study (PDF).
If there were a few standardized policies that most sites used, then users wouldn't need to read them. Like with software licenses, you don't bother to read the GPL for each time you install software that uses that license.
Or maybe people shouldn't submit their data to every website they visit. If they care about their privacy, they had better well read the privacy policy.
Companies aren't going to dumb-down their policies and open themselves to lawsuits. They are precise and lengthy for a reason.
In the end it doesn't even matter, though. They all include a clause that lets them change the policy any time they like.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
200 hours? big deal.
Average amount of hours wasted reading Slashdot at work in a year : 5,000,000
"But this one goes to 11!"
Some group need to write a half dozen or so policies covering a range of options and publish them under a license which *does not* allow them to be used under the same name if any changes are made.
Who really reads the GPL anymore after you have went through it a few time? the MPL? BSD? If you get somewhere under a dozen options out there you can save *everybody* time..
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
My bigger concern is the content of these privacy agreements.
!Equality through palindromes semordnilap hguorht ytilauqE!
For how much is wasted with all the current US laws. If ignorance of the law is no excuse, then how much time would it take to read and understand EVERY US law that might affect us.
That's a study I would like to see.
to implement my low cost IT Law firm. For a nominal fee we would certify websites and software. Don't want to read the EULA, just check with our firm for verification.
We'd even specialize in defending the rights of netizens and downloaders.
Online legal service for hire.
Eschew Obfuscation
In the license world, when I see GPL, LGPL, etc most of the time I know what they are without having to read the full text. Can't they make some standard privacy policies so we can save the time reading them?
200 hours a year? I would be spending 200 hours a month if I read all of the EULAs I encountered.
Pretty much every privacy policy in the known universe says "Hi! We care about your privacy here at X, so we won't share your personal information except as permitted by law!"
Occasionally they bury an opt-out provision to one of their sharing agreements on page 27.
you should have no expectations on privacy, suck it up.
Good work! --Eeyore
I'd like something simple and standardized: Yes you can re-use content No, it has to be attributed. No, you can't use our logo. blah blah blah etc. rights.txt Have the browser integrate it and have pretty little icons like creative commons does.
meh
I can pretty much guarantee the Federal standard would be a nightmare.
The worst of K street will have second crack at the legislation. The Cheney administration would have first crack at it and take another opportunity to sodomize legal history and Constitutional law. Both houses of Congress have more or less abdicated their responsibility in providing checks, so it gets Fugly fast.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
You people who are obsessed with your privacy should be happy for the chance to spend 200 hours a month reading these policies. It's what you care about.
The rest of us don't care how long they are because we would rather live good lives rather than private lives. So we don't read them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Even if we did read and understand the privacy policy, would we disagree and not access the website/content?
Short, sweet and to the point. Fine use of rhetoricals and emphasis on the punchline. This well balanced piece is let down by its brevity and typos, I can't help but feel that Coward rushed this work.
Worth your time. Three and a half stars.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
The researchers propose that, if the industry can't make privacy policies easier to read or skim, then federal intervention may be needed.
Why does the government need to be involved in everything? Why can't people take a little responsibility? If you don't like the privacy policy on a site (or it is too long to read), then DON'T GO THERE. You don't need the gov for that.
Not to mention that the web is international. Nothing the EU does forces anything on Brazil, for example.
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
Slashdot shares its privacy policy with SourceForge and at nearly 3500 words of legalese they're able to declare themselves "self-certified" under the Safe Harbor principles set up by the US Department of Commerce. There's even a fancy image to prove it.
I like this part of the policy:
Someone please let me know when Slashdot wants my picture for promotional use! I could be the face of Slashdot, or more appropriately, freshmeat.com
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
How hard would it be to write the following summary:
"We will collect your information to provide product recommendations for you while logged in at this site. We will not share your personal information with any third party without your permission as demonstrated by going to your user profile and opting in for information sharing. We promise to take every reasonable measure to ensure that your personal information, while stored by us, is inaccessible to hackers and other potential identity thieves."
Then, attach the version for lawyers.
I would imagine every American loses like, a bujillion hours a month watching TV. That probably costs a lot too.
Not to nitpick, but 200 hours per year is actually 40 hours less than 20 hours per month by my rough estimate or roughly 16 hours and 40 minutes per month. Not that I am a math major or anything, but I am pretty good with basic arithmetic. Someone, please check my work.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Even better, a tag could tell your browser which standard policy is being used. Tell your browser which policies you want to be accepted, and what action to take for sites with other policies.
But nobody reads them, just like EULAs. Users just have the expectation of privacy, just as they do in real life. Even if a few companies and marketing experts think it's unrealistic or impossible, people just have that expectation anyway. Nobody is automatically suspicious of nefarious activities, people are generally unsuspecting.
Twinstiq, game news
So we're proposing the Federal government enact a law to make privacy policies easier to read?
Has anyone read the entire tax law recently, much less ALL the laws we're supposed to know?
Ignorance is no defense, after all.
Every time Apple releases a new ITunes* a "new" EULA pops up. (I've been trying to force myself to read these damned things lately.) Hey Apple, how about a 'diff' of the old & new EULAs so I don't have to read the same text every time you tweak the UI?!?!?!
Standardization on EULAs would be a great help. Or are you guys trying to force me into only using GPLd software?
* It's not just Apple, either- device drivers, web toolbars, you name it...
This sounds like an area ripe for the Creative Commons treatment.
Produce a small suite of precise privacy practices, as detailed as you like, each with an approved "plain English" summary, just as the CC licenses do.
After a short adjustment period, one would no longer have to even skim the summary of the license, just as many surfers know by now what the "Share Alike" CC license is.
Call them CPPs: Common Privacy Practices. You could have CPP: Share Internal, CPP: Share With Partners, CPP: Sell To Anyone, CPP: Eat Your Baby and Kick Your Dog, etc.
Either they violate them and sell your info to everyone with limited to no reprisal, or some idiot "loses" (eBays) a laptop with all the data.
Don't lie to me and tell me when I know you don't care about my private info.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
reading about this article and coming to slashdot 20 times per day. Not enough for me too care.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Sounds like an interesting report, but I can't spare the time to read it.
Slashdot must be using the New Math.
So, if our time, 200 hrs, is worth $350 billion
And we spend 5,000,000 hrs / year reading slashdot
That means our wasted hours reading slashdot is worth $8,750,000,000,000,000.00
Good God man! If we slashdotters collude on this we can buy the whole planet and kick everyone else off it, or at least charge them rent.
-----
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Really, who puts their real name?
I've registered with lots of sites using the name Art Vandelay, architect, or Art Vandelay, importer-exporter, and a throwaway email address.
You don't need to worry about the privacy policy of a website if they don't have your info.
Federal intervention may be needed to control privacy policies on teh intarweb? That global, international thingy?
Good luck forcing a (pick your country) federal anything on other countries.
I'm not against the general idea, however it should come from a standard web group (not sure if it would fall within the W3C domain, the IETF, etc).
Why should we ask for the privacy polices to be easier to read? Wouldn't everyone here prefer that there was no need for a policy at all? No online tracking, no sharing of your email address or purchasing habits. Of course there are a few people, my wife included, that would prefer to be tracked all day long so they can spend less time looking for crap they don't need but buy anyway.
So we're going to measure the cost of things in FBP's now?
The right tends to prefer less regulation, and to let the markets work as efficiently as possible. Deregulation - generally led by the right and approved by both major political parties - occurs over the course of many years. This deregulation often leads to growth and an increase in prosperity, especially for those with substantial money to invest - i.e. those who don't work for a living. The right suspects that with the increase in private funds, fewer social programs are needed and they save money. This is, to an extent, true - as insurance companies do well with investments, their rates for covering the insured tends to drop (real insurance, not healthcare - which is more of a maintenance contract for most people)
At some point, the market finds dicier and dicier ways of making greater profits - trying to outdo the last quarter/year. This is, of course, demanded by those who invest, and is an inherent part of human nature. At some point, the wave hits it peak and crashes. The longer the overall deregulation cycle, the harder the crash.
What happens next? The left steps in and tries to "fix" things by adding back all the regulations which were removed, and new ones to patch the holes where "innovative" financial products have been created. No matter who you let clean up the mess, the economy is going to be lousy for a few years, and all the private money which helped out communities will dry up. The left sees that as an invitation to help, and the put in the social programs which weren't needed. Everybody remembers how bad it was when the left was in power, and how good it was when the right was in power, with little thought about the transition period.
What lesson can we learn? Neither side is doing their job properly. Because markets are not perfectly efficient, and humans are programmed to hit the big score, the government really does need to keep an even hand on regulation. Have you ever seen a regulation that caused the wholesale failure of an entire industry? We've just seen a deregulation which has done it. Step back and consider that regulation - the verb, not the noun - is essential to practically every natural process. It prevents overheating and out-of-control processes from becoming dangerous. It should also prevent stagnation and the loss of momentum. If the government could learn to regulate without smothering or ignoring flare-ups _everyone_ in society would benefit. This is not some socialist rhetoric; under good regulation, everyone has a chance to succeed, and the best will indeed outstrip the common. What it will do is reduce the negative impact that the few irresponsible have on society as a whole.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
20 hours X 12 months = 240 hours
On September 10, 2001 Rumsfeld announced that the Pentagon couldn't account for $2.3 trillion. They don't really need the bailout.
Rep. Brad Sherman from California has mentioned that the bailout will be used to buy assets from foreign banks (such as China and Saudi Arabia). Banks in the US will just keep getting absorbed by the larger banks, such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
CNBC is also reporting this morning that they will both be nationalized today or this weekend! They'll basically be used to launder money to foreign banks as a payoff. This is the last looting of the American people by foreigners. That's why the government stopped reporting statistics a few months ago on foreign investment inside the US.
Welcome to freedom, comrade!
There is also talk of shutting down the international markets and creating a new Bretton Woods type deal. Don't think for a second that this new Bretton Woods deal wasn't already written and waiting for this crisis to occur.
How fast does the average person take to read a policy according these statistics?
I am one of the very rare people who reads the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy of *every* website (if available) and most of them are fairly standardised anyway, it might take 1 to 2 minutes to read through if that. Once you have read it all you have to do is check for updates afterwards, not keep reading them every time you visit but maybe it's because I visit the same sites over and over? I don't know but frankly I doubt this number.
How about a one-line privacy policy that states "We will most likely sell your credit card information to Al-Qaeda for a box of doughnuts."
I went to a supermarket this morning.
I didn't need to license the right to walk around and view the "product label prices" content, nor did I need to agree not to sue them for being out of Diet Coke Lime, nor did I need to consent to be monitored by security cameras and have my image stored on tapes.
Why can't visiting a web site on-line be that simple?
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
TrustE, in their early days, used to have several seals that indicated the level of privacy policy in use. So the TrustE seal actually meant something.
Then, in response to advertiser pressure, TrustE caved in. All a TrustE means now is that the site agrees to abide by its own privacy policy. It doesn't matter how intrusive the policy is; the site can still get a TrustE seal.
TrustE enforcement has been very weak. Here's a study of TrustE enforcement actions. "Their privacy standards are low to begin with, but even these rules are simply not enforced against large, paying members." In the entire history of TrustE, they have terminated only one paying seal-holder: Gratis Internet, the "free iPod" scammer.
It seems to me that the obvious answer to this problem is to establish a 'parts bin' of privacy policy components that are guaranteed to be compatible with each other, and use a publishing mechanism similar to the creative commons licensing site, so the most common ones become known quantities for average users.
The researchers propose that, if the industry can't make privacy policies easier to read or skim, then federal intervention may be needed.
Why? Why should I need the federal government to get involved? At what point did I lose the power to choose to simply not use the service. If I don't have time to read the policy, then I can simply say no. It is only at the point that I no longer have a choice and that my rights are threatened that I need the federal government to step in and protect my rights.
How did we become a society of people who believe that the only ones who can solve our problems are the government, worse, the federal government? Have we no self reliance anymore?
'nough said.
-><- no
Interesting, this get's flagged redundant when it was posted 10 minutes before the other post. It's also funnier!!!
If we focus on the real problem presented here (readability and awareness of stated intention, and possibly client-side enforcement - not compliance, that's a separate issue), the problem's really not that big to solve.
Some of the comments here point to some techniques and practices that could actually be cobbled together very cleanly.
We've got the Creative Commons generator for human-readable deeds, lawyer-spew, and machine-readable code. Not that hard to adapt a version with "We Don't Keep Your Credit Cards" or "All Your Identity Are Belong To Gator." More options, sure, but probably easy to extrapolate in a form.
Making it machine readable (or, hell, even Geek Code-formatted; SSL-128+, 419--, Spam^3) means you can extend P3P-savvy user agents to watch for the framing of the policy, alert you to behavior you're not comfortable with, and automatically flag you with a Firefox-style notification when it sees a diff.
Hell, even if we can't get that kind of progressive behavior from a vendor, there's other tools out there that can be adapted, right? I haven't tried AT&T's PrivacyBird yet (referenced in the P3P article on WikiPedia), but between that and other tools like EULAlyzer, how hard can it be to drop in a browser-level tool that either queries a third-party database for privacy analysis and warnings, or examines the policy directly and gives you some breakdown of potential bad behavior?
Let's go even further -- supposing your site's targeting North America and Western Europe, but either you, or the hosted content or partner links, are in nations with known, uh, *default privacy behavior* that overrides the vendor's. Why not have a "Holy Dammit You're Trying To Hit A Blog Site From China" or "AT Your World Delivered To The NSA" alert?
(Okay, maybe not an alert for that one, but at least a visual cue somewhere in the browser status bar. Maybe an All-Seeing Eye, or a Boot Stamping On The Face Of Humanity, Forever. Something unobtrustive like that.)
Look, honestly -- I don't see how a legally-mandated expression of a readable, understandable privacy policy should be any different from the Surgeon General's warning on a pack of smokes or the list of ingredients and nutritional value on the side of a cereal box. The goods or services you're looking to work with have an impact on YOU and you should have some way to find out about it, quickly.
They didn't write 2.10^2 because most people wouldn't get it, but that's probably what they meant and what Col. Korn assumed they meant.
Had they written "201", "199", or "EXACTLY 200 hours," which they haven't, then that would have been, indeed, 3 significant digits.
I'm with you. I strongly suspect gross mismanagement and willful negligence by wallstreet is part and parcel of something else.
Doesn't anyone remember the cold war? Nuclear armageddon on the horizon for 50 years? The intellectuals on the other side of that conflict were staunchly against wallstreet and the banks. You'll forgive me if I don't believe that they forgot about this conflict to the tune of 700 billion in housing loan fuck ups.
Americans need to travel more. They'll see a world much like theirs, with institutions nothing like theirs.
Privacy Statement
SOURCEFORGE, INC. UNITED STATES/EUROPEAN UNION SAFE HARBOR PRIVACY STATEMENT (âoePRIVACY STATEMENTâ)
(Last Updated May 23, 2008)
(Effective Date May 24, 2008)
SourceForge, Inc. (âoeSourceForgeâ), comprised of the Internet sites SourceForge.com, SourceForge.net, Slashdot.org, freshmeat.net, ITmanagersJournal.com, Linux.com, ThinkGeek.com (the âoeSitesâ), is committed to protecting the privacy of users of the Sites. SourceForge intends to give users as much control as possible over userâ(TM)s personally identifiable information, including registration data. This Privacy Statement applies to each of the Sites and describes the information SourceForge collects about users and how that information may be used.
SourceForge reserves the right to update and change this Privacy Statement from time to time. If SourceForge makes material changes to its privacy practices, a prominent notice will be posted on this web page. Each time a user uses the Sites, the current version of the Privacy Statement applies. Accordingly, a user should check the date of this Privacy Statement (which appears at the top) and review for any changes since the last version. If a user does not agree to the Privacy Statement, the user should not use the Sites.
SourceForge complies with the United States (âoeUSâ)/European Union (âoeEUâ) Safe Harbor framework as set forth by the US Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of data from the EU. Individuals who wish to file a complaint or who take issue with SourceForge's EU Safe Harbor policies should direct such communication to SourceForge Legal Services - Privacy via written communication at the contact information provided below. Filing a complaint in English will expedite the process. SourceForge will investigate and attempt to resolve complaints regarding use and disclosure of personal information in accordance with the principles contained in this Privacy Statement. For complaints that cannot be resolved between SourceForge and the complainant, SourceForge participates in the dispute resolution procedures of the panel established by the EU data protection authorities to resolve disputes pursuant to the Safe Harbor framework.
SourceForge agrees to notify users of the following privacy principles: Notice, Choice, Onward Transfer, Security, Data Integrity, Access, and Enforcement.
NOTICE
SourceForge provides this Privacy Statement to make users aware of SourceForge privacy practices, and of the choices a user may make about the way the userâ(TM)s information is collected and used.
Children
Users represent they are of legal age to create binding and financial obligations for any liability users may incur as a result of their use of the Sites. The Sites are not directed to children under the age of 13, and SourceForge will never request personally identifiable information from anyone whom it knows to be under the age of 13 without verifiable parental or guardian consent. SourceForge does not knowingly collect, or wish to obtain, personally identifiable information from children. If SourceForge becomes aware that a user is under the age of 13 and has provided personally identifiable information without prior verifiable parental or guardian consent, it will remove userâ(TM)s personally identifiable information from its files.
What information SourceForge collects
SourceForge may collect two types of information from users of Sites: "personally identifiable information" (such as name, email address, postal address, telephone, birth date) and "aggregate information" (such as frequency of visits to Sites, IP address, Site pages most frequently accessed, browser type). Personally identifiable information is any piece of information which can potentially be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a user of the Sites. Aggregate information is non-personally identifiable/anonymous information about users of the Sites. Aggreg
Imagine all the time businesses would spend if they read (and took the effort to digest) all the legal terms and conditions written on routine documents, like invoices, purchase orders, and bills of lading, from trading partners. Under a legal phenomenon called the "battle of the forms," businesses learned that the best approach was not to read all the terms communicated to them. Instead, they learned to transmit their own terms to their trading partners, using their own documents. By so doing, they sorta blunted or neutralized or adjusted the blizzard of terms coming from trading partners. (The process was never perfect, but if done intelligently it had an effect.) I argue the same phenomenon can occur in the privacy space. I argue people can publish their own terms of privacy. (It's a complex topic, and I'm not giving anyone legal advice here. Topic for more discussion.) --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-privacy-policy-terms-of-service.html
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
but 20 hours isn't enough for you is it, thats why you have a harem of gay boys who prefer jelly.
I figured I would read it first and then click OK (knowing I couldn't understand it all).
After about 15-20 minutes I realized their server had timed me out & I lost my connection to their server.
Never tried again after that.
The researchers propose that, if the industry can't make privacy policies easier to read or skim, then federal intervention may be needed.
If you don't want to read their privacy policy, tell them that you're not going to use their service because their privacy policy is so long. If you convince enough people to do the same, they'll have to shorten their privacy policy. Federal regulation of the economy is never the answer. It is never justifiable.
Fair assessment. Great turnaround time.
Would troll again AAAAAAAAAAAAA++++++++++++++++
Ozphx makes a well balanced critique of the Cowards work.
A must read, two thumbs up.
NO SIG
If there were real federal laws that actually protected consumer privacy, then the privacy policy of most sites would be very simple, and read as follows:
"We abide by the federal laws that protect your privacy"
Then we would not have this problem.
"End User License Agreement
EndUserAgreementText"
Well, at least I guess there is no significant legal risk in accepting it.
I sent a mail asking if they could not simply remove the license agreement, since it was even clearer than usual that it did not serve any useful purpose. To my surprise, they actually took the time to write a personal reply and explain why they needed to have it. Apparently, the original text was lost in a site update.
According to their mail, over 2000 new users had joined since the text was lost, and I was the first one to notice. I'm not sure how much legal weight these agreements actually have.
Back in the Clinton administration, the FTC tried to set a precedent for enforcement of privacy policies with the case of Toysmart.com. Toysmart.com went bankrupt and a judge ruled that they could sell their customer database in violation of their own privacy policy to settle debt. The Clinton administration tried to reverse the decision on appeal but the case went on after Clinton left office and Bush came in.
The Bush administration tried to broker a compromise allowing Toysmart.com to sell their database as long as it was to a company in the same industry. One of the shareholders in Toysmart.com didn't want to be responsible for that decision so he bought the database himself and destroyed it. No precedent was set and the Bush administration hasn't tried to prosecute anyone for violation of privacy policy since.
Is "financial bailout package" going to join "library of congress" as a standard slashdot UOM?
That that is is not that that is not. That that is not is not that that is.
If a businesses' privacy policy is more than one sentence long it means they don't have one.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Instead of comparing this US$365B to the dollars applied to the US$700B "bailout" passed by Congress, the more accurate comparison is the (claimed) US$250B "lost" to piracy
If losing a mere $250 billion is enough to start talk about having the federal government enforce private copyrights and include setting up a "copyright czar", I would think that having the economy lose $375 billion (1.5x) should be worthy of government regulation and a "privacy czar" (who has some actual authority).
If big business expects us to fund their broken business models, we should force them to re-evaluate. Perhaps paying a government fee based on the number of words in the privacy policy and a standard 20,000 word fee, if a commercial site does not include a privacy policy would get them to notice the absurdity of their goals.
I've been thinking about this for a while, but not only for online applications. What we need to do is get organized and have everyone (at least in the U.S.A.) to set up rules which we want to become law.
My idea for this is simple, for any company with which you enter a relationship, your information by law should not be able to be shared at all, whatsoever outside of that organization. IF that company has subsidiaries, directly related to the services they provide (such as a phone company who also has internet, VoIP, 'cable TV' or anything simiar) then they can share it amongst themselves. Maybe because of the modern day tie it in to domains.
So for example, I now have home phone service with AT&T. So if they wish to sell me TV, VoIP or internet services, they must be within their *.att.com domain. It can't be uverse.com or attinternet.com. This way i won't be getting spam from at&t wireless OR any other company who I never solicited.
Another thing to implement is that once you sign a withdraw from sharing your information, it stands until changed by the consumer. None of this yearly bullshit. No means no for women who are trying to prevent rape, but no means no for only 12 months when trying to eliminate unwanted solicitations.
It's that simple, one or both will work for us. But we have to REALLY get together and push for it. What will happen if ever introduced as a bill is that the companies will pay huge sums against this policy. Then we vote (where applicable) to get rid of those who don't vote in our favor.
There are many reason to share your info with other companies, which is fine if you WANT that. But this has to be in our control, not theirs.
Once something that basic is in place we can start working towards online because they'll have something to reference. Remember, because we're online a bit and have a decent grasp on what's going on, people who are in government aren't really like us, they don't know and don't care about our privacy. While they protect their assets even if no one really cares how much or where they have their multiple houses and yachts, we do care where we rent and what numbers we have.
What do you guys think?
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
What about a global forum where users would volunteer to read through the licenses of various programs and inform the community about the possible hooks? .... although I can't imagine how to attract a big enough group of masochists who would be prepared to do such a thing.
... aren't followed. The EULA for Itunes sure wasn't followed during the brief Itunes 8 debacle. My wife has never given permission for "non-affiliated" companies to make use of information about her car ownership and yet just the other day a car dealership for a completely different car company sent her a coupon for service on her specific vehicle. The big companies don't really follow their own privacy policies if they think they can make more money selling the info than they will on legal costs dealing with the handful of irritated customers that result.
I didn't see any actual study -- just a link to a pdf blob. Where's the study? If it's not on the web, why post about it?
This is really simple: YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO READ THE POLICIES!
yes, this puts you in a highly insecure legal position - which is what they WANT!
whatever goes wrong: it's YOUR fault!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
i lol-ed, v funny
More Federal Intervention.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Aren't these privacy policies often muted in court anyway? Like, cases where users claim the policy itself was too confusing, and no one in their right mind should be expected to read, comply, and then choose for themselves whether or not to accept the terms of a service that they probably will need regardless?
And do we really have a choice? I mean, if I don't agree with Microsoft's terms, I have to quit being a programmer. They can add whatever they like, and many of us really don't have a choice. Hence, if something really vile were to be added, most likely Microsoft won't be able to enforce it just because we all clicked "agree."
That dude that bought that database was from the future, ensuring Bush wouldn't fuck this one up too.
Pff, as if. Even a harem of gay boys can't handle my jelly-jelly!
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]