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).

Comments

Or maybe...

[Aladrin]

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.

Re:Solution: Standardized policies

[truthsearch]

Creative Commons puts out a variety of licenses that have a simple (human readable) version and a complete (legal) version. A logo or link on a site makes it immediately clear which license is being used. The exact same formula would probably work quite well for privacy policies.