37 Pages Posted: 2 Apr 2016 Last revised: 18 Aug 2018 
 
 Date Written: June 1, 2018 
 
 Abstract 
 
 This paper addresses ‘the biggest lie on the internet’ with an empirical investigation of privacy policy (PP) and terms of service (TOS) policy reading behavior. An experimental survey (N=543) assessed the extent to which individuals ignored PP and TOS when joining a fictitious social networking service, NameDrop. Results reveal 74% skipped PP, selecting the ‘quick join’ clickwrap. Average adult reading speed (250-280 words per minute), suggests PP should have taken 29-32 minutes and TOS 15-17 minutes to read. For those that didn’t select the clickwrap, average PP reading time was 73 seconds. All participants were presented the TOS and had an average reading time of 51 seconds. Most participants agreed to the policies, 97% to PP and 93% to TOS, with decliners reading PP 30 seconds longer and TOS 90 seconds longer. A regression analysis identifies information overload as a significant negative predictor of reading TOS upon signup, when TOS changes, and when PP changes. Qualitative findings suggest that participants view policies as nuisance, ignoring them to pursue the ends of digital production, without being inhibited by the means. Implications are revealed as 98% missed NameDrop TOS ‘gotcha clauses’ about data sharing with the NSA and employers, and about providing a first-born child as payment for SNS access. ||||| 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]
– 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.)