Study: 98% Of Us Will Sign Away Our Firstborn Because We Don’t Read The Terms Of Service 
 
 “Click here if you have read and agree to the Terms of Service.” How many times in your life — heck, how many times just this month, or this year — have you hovered over that little ticky box without bothering to click the TOS link first? Or scrolled straight to the bottom of a pop-up window with 17 pages of boring legalese in it, just to continue installation? If your answer is anything other than “all the times,” you are in a very, very small minority. 
 
 A new study from researchers at two universities has confirmed what most of us already anecdotally know: nobody’s actually reading the fine print, even if they should. 
 
 And how did the researchers find this, you may ask? By creating a fictitious social networking site that research participants signed up for. The privacy policy and terms of service for this fictitious site were modeled on existing documents on another social network (LinkedIn), and checked in at roughly 8000 and 4000 words respectively. 
 
 But this fake site’s policies included a few extra clauses that should have raised eyebrows. One had to do with data sharing, and specified that the site could share your information with the NSA “and other security agencies in the United States and abroad.” It also said that your data could be shared with any third parties, and as a result “could impact eligibility in… employment, financial service, univeristy, entrance, international travel, the criminal justice system, etc.” 
 
 The other said that participants agreed to sign over their firstborn, Rumpelstiltskin-style: “In addition to any monetary payment … all users of this site agree to immediately assign their first-born child” to the site, it read. “If the user does not yet have children, this agreement will be enforceable until the year 2050.” 
 
 The researchers then asked open-ended questions to the participants asking if they had any concerns with the policies and sign-up options. 
 
 543 research participants signed up for the site. Of those, 399 skipped all the fine print entirely and just signed up blindly. For the remaining 144, the average time spent “reading” the privacy policy was 73 seconds, and for the TOS, 51 seconds. 
 
 Even the best speed-readers are not going to get through — and understand — 8000 words of legalese in 73 seconds, and these participants were no exception. In the end, the researchers found that 98% of all participants completely missed the existence of the “gotcha” clauses. That means a total of 10-11 participants, at most, actually noticed. 
 
 Research participants were all undergrads, as is very common for university-based research. But this behavior is far from limited to young adults. A similar experiment in the UK in 2014 found the same results, with users unwittingly signing away their firstborn in exchange for access to a free WiFi hotspot. A UK-based retailer found the same in 2010 when their customers happily, and unwittingly, signed over their immortal souls. 
 
 Other studies have found that barely one in five internet users actually read the terms, and even they probably don’t usually stop to process the words. 
 
 So yes, we should all read a little more carefully before we proceed — because as long as they disclose it, a company can do pretty much anything they want with your account or personal information. Of course, it doesn’t help that the policies are usually long, dense, complicated, formatted badly, and full of legalese. There are some tools that help but when it comes to comprehensibility, we still have a long way to go. 
 
 [via Ars Technica] ||||| A good Wi-Fi network is hard to find, but six Londoners were willing to pay the ultimate price -- based on the Terms and Conditions they agreed to, anyway. 
 
 In an experiment sponsored by security firm F-Secure, an open Wi-Fi network was set up in a busy public area. When people connected, they were presented with lengthy terms and conditions. 
 
 But to see just how little attention we pay when checking that agreement box, F-Secure included a "Herod clause" -- one that offered up free Wi-Fi in exchange for the company's permanent ownership of the user's firstborn child. 
 
 The experiment was intended to highlight the dangers of connecting to unknown Wi-Fi networks, the Guardian reports. While only six people clicked through the Herod clause, another 33 devices connected once the researchers removed all Terms and Conditions. Meanwhile, users left their personal data -- including passwords -- completely vulnerable to the network. 
 
 A company would probably have trouble getting you to hand over your pride and joy (even if you were technically contractually obligated), so don't panic. But this hapless agreement to terms is pretty common: A 2011 survey found that 58 percent of adults would rather read an instruction manual or credit card bill than go through online terms and conditions. Even the phone book was a more palatable read for 12 percent of those surveyed. 
 
 And we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that people basically never read the things they agree to online -- because if we did, we'd spend about 76 days a year doing it. In fact, this new study isn't the first of its kind: On April Fool's Day in 2010, a host of U.K. shoppers were tricked into signing away their immortal souls. 
 
 But hey, wait, what if you always read the terms and conditions? Consider this: In a 2008 study, the Nielsen Norman Group consulting firm concluded that Internet users probably only actually read about 20 percent of the words they "read." We've convinced ourselves that we're master speed readers, but we're actually just skimming. 
 
 People read text online differently than print, studies have found, with eyes flitting about from word to word instead of traveling linearly. That's okay -- the brain isn't naturally suited to one way of reading or the other, so we can probably force ourselves to stay good at both if we try. But when presented with a solid wall of text in the form of a contract that also happens to be on a screen, People use their skimming skills instead of the line-by-line reading that might protect them from legal snares. 
 
 But there's a difference between a solid skim and not reading something at all, and surely it takes a special level of inattention to accidentally sacrifice your child or soul. Scientists can't be sure yet whether our shrinking attention spans are the result of our tech-heavy life -- or if the distractions are just giving us an outlet for our naturally flitting focus. But either way, maybe we should start demanding distraction-proof bullet points at the top of all of our contractual agreements. 
 
 Read More: 
 
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 Teen science duo finds that some people work better when they have digital ‘distractions’ 
 
 The science behind Brian Williams’s mortifying memory flub 
 
 Music lessons spur emotional and behavioral growth in children, new study says
– If Facebook or Apple ever turns truly evil, we might be in big trouble, apparently. A study published last week found that almost nobody reads online terms of service agreements—and even fewer understand them. Ars Technica reports 543 college students signed up for a fake social networking site called NameDrop, believing they were helping with a "pre-launch evaluation." They were actually agreeing to hand over their first-born child to NameDrop—enforceable through 2050—as well as have their data and information shared with the NSA, foreign security agencies, and all manner of third parties, according to Consumerist. But, of course, only 2% of participants realized they were agreeing to any of that. The study found 399 participants didn't read any of the 12,000 words comprising NameDrop's terms of service and privacy policy. The other 144 spent an average of 73 seconds reading the privacy policy and 51 seconds reading the terms of service. Based on average reading speed, it should have taken 30 minutes and 16 minutes respectively. In the end, 98% of participants didn't notice any of the onerous clauses in NameDrops's terms. The study concluded that people "view policies as nuisance" and that "I agree to these terms and conditions" is the "biggest lie on the internet." (Amazon will void its terms of service if the zombies come.)