Tuesday, January 28, 2020, is international Data Privacy Day (DPD). The purpose of Data Privacy Day is to raise awareness and promote privacy and data protection best practices. One privacy best practice is to actually read the end-user license agreements (EULA) that come with everything you download from the Internet.
If you can’t wade through the legal gibberish telling you they are going to sell all your data to someone you never heard of? I don’t blame you – two law professors analyzed the terms and conditions of 500 popular U.S. websites and found that more than 99% of them were “unreadable,” far exceeding the level most American adults read at but are still enforced. The researchers wrote that the average readability level of the EULA agreements they reviewed was comparable to articles in academic journals – take a look at “Terms of Service; Didn’t Read” (ToS;DR).
EULA grades
ToS;DR is a project started to help fix the “biggest lie on the web”: almost no one really reads the terms of service we agree to all the time. The service grades website EULA’s from Amazon to Zappos from A (best) to E (worst) once a comprehensive list of cases has been reviewed by volunteers. Some of the ratings are:
A – The best terms of services: they treat you fairly, respect your rights, and will not abuse your data.- B – The terms of services are fair towards the user but they could be improved.
- C – The terms of service are okay but some issues need your consideration.
- D – The terms of service are very uneven or there are some important issues that need your attention.
- E – The terms of service raise very serious concerns.
- No Class Yet ToS;DR has not sufficiently reviewed the terms yet.
Here are the privacy ratings of the FAANG largest websites according to ToS;DR:
- Facebook = Not rated yet,
- Apple = Not rated yet,
- Amazon = Class C,
- Netflix = Not rated yet,
- Google = Class C.
There are a few sites that respect users privacy and get a Class A rating from ToS;DR:
DuckDudkGo (Search engine),- Kolab Now (Email/groupware),
- SeenThis (Advertising),
- WindowsLogic Productions (Software developer).
Other well-known sites with ToS;DR ratings:
- IMDb = Class C,
- YouTube = Class D,
- Twitter = Class D,
- Stack Overflow Class E.
You can download the ToS;DR:browser extensions here.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.