Shocker: Consumers Don't Read Privacy Policies; Shop By Brand
from the well,-duh dept
Does anyone actually read the privacy policies at the e-commerce sites where they shop? If you thought the answer was a big fat no, you're probably right. People are concerned about privacy, but they tend to trust the brand, and not the actual privacy policy. It seems that most people use the fact that a brand is popular as a sort of proxy to mean that their privacy policy must be reasonable. Of course, online sites don't help matters by hiding their privacy policies and then filling them with all sorts of vague legalese and including the ever popular "these terms may be subject to change without notice" type disclaimers.
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rational decision
Not paying much attention to stated privacy policies is a rational decision, because: (1) there's not a lot of reason to trust them since there's almost no enforcement; (2) there's not a lot of reason to trust them since the policies can always be changed, especially if the company changes hands; (3) as the article points out, the policies are written in a weasly way, so they don't mean much anyway. In short, most people probably figure: "The company is gonna trash my privacy if they want regardless of what the policy says, so I just have to decide if what they offer is worth it."
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Re: rational decision
# 2
Why read the damn things when they change them @ will ?
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