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To Read All Of The Privacy Policies You Encounter, You'd Need To Take A Month Off From Work Each Year
from the get-busy-reading dept
We've discussed the stupidity of privacy policies many times in the past. Honestly, it's an idea that serves no useful purpose, yet most sites are required to have one, and if you don't, people get all upset. But no one reads them, and most people incorrectly assume that if a site has any privacy policy, they must keep data private.
The reality is that the incentives of a privacy policy are to not use it to keep your info private. In fact, the incentives are to make a privacy policy as permissive as possible. Because the only time you get in trouble is not if you fail to protect someone's privacy... but if you violate your own privacy policy. So companies have the incentive to write a privacy policy that is as permissive to the company as possible, so that they're less likely to avoid violating their own privacy policy. That is, conceptually, the best privacy policy for a company is one that says "we don't take your privacy seriously at all and share all your data," because then they'll never break that policy. Of course, companies don't go that far, because that's pretty extreme -- but it does lead to vague privacy policies that no one reads anyway. Oh, and even when people do read them, almost no one understands them.
In fact, a new report notes that if you actually bothered to read all the privacy policies you encounter on a daily basis, it would take you 250 working hours per year -- or about 30 workdays. The full study (pdf) by Aleecia M. McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor is quite interesting. They measure the length of privacy policies, ranging from just 144 words up to 7,669 words (median is around 2,500 words) and recognize that at a standard reading pace of 250 words per minute, most privacy policies take about eight to ten minutes to read. They also ran some tests to figure out how long it actually takes people to read and/or skim privacy policies.
They put all of this together and estimated that it would normally take a person about 244 hours per year to read every new privacy policy they encountered... and even 154 hours just to skim them. They used some variables to create a lower and upper bound estimate as well:
They then go further to try to estimate the cost to the economy of all this privacy policy reading, but I always finds such extrapolations to be pretty meaningless. They assume a constant return on time, so just like bogus studies about how much personal surfing "costs" the economy, those figures seem totally meaningless. But the amount of time estimates do seem completely valid.
And, here's the thing: that's only for privacy policies. Imagine if you read terms of service and end user license agreements too... Of course, sometimes those include little hidden gems. Like the time a company put a clause in its EULA that the first person to read that clause and contact them would get $1,000. It only took four months for someone to actually spot it.
The reality is that the incentives of a privacy policy are to not use it to keep your info private. In fact, the incentives are to make a privacy policy as permissive as possible. Because the only time you get in trouble is not if you fail to protect someone's privacy... but if you violate your own privacy policy. So companies have the incentive to write a privacy policy that is as permissive to the company as possible, so that they're less likely to avoid violating their own privacy policy. That is, conceptually, the best privacy policy for a company is one that says "we don't take your privacy seriously at all and share all your data," because then they'll never break that policy. Of course, companies don't go that far, because that's pretty extreme -- but it does lead to vague privacy policies that no one reads anyway. Oh, and even when people do read them, almost no one understands them.
In fact, a new report notes that if you actually bothered to read all the privacy policies you encounter on a daily basis, it would take you 250 working hours per year -- or about 30 workdays. The full study (pdf) by Aleecia M. McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor is quite interesting. They measure the length of privacy policies, ranging from just 144 words up to 7,669 words (median is around 2,500 words) and recognize that at a standard reading pace of 250 words per minute, most privacy policies take about eight to ten minutes to read. They also ran some tests to figure out how long it actually takes people to read and/or skim privacy policies.
They put all of this together and estimated that it would normally take a person about 244 hours per year to read every new privacy policy they encountered... and even 154 hours just to skim them. They used some variables to create a lower and upper bound estimate as well:
And, here's the thing: that's only for privacy policies. Imagine if you read terms of service and end user license agreements too... Of course, sometimes those include little hidden gems. Like the time a company put a clause in its EULA that the first person to read that clause and contact them would get $1,000. It only took four months for someone to actually spot it.
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I see HOA's as a symptom of the culture underlying the American society, one that believes everybody can be forced to comply if you push hard enough.
This is exactly why I don't think the politics will change anytime soon because to change them you need to change the culture and that takes decades.
Those people truly believe they can mandate others to conform to all kinds of stuff, which in some cases is good but seriously most of the time is just bad.
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doubt my words, try not paying your property taxes for a few years, see what happens.....
sorry but in this country its getting more and more so you dont own anything, that you pay for the right to use it as long as the govt/big content see fit....
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I'm finding there are better ways to waste time than sit in front of a TV screen trying to figure out legalities of using new technology to watch/listen to Media.
And there are better ways to waste money than give it to these greedy media companies.
Get out. Buy a new bike, ride it, etc.
At least you really own it then.
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No one really reads these things. Maybe next time they can ensure a minimal amount of time elapses before I click the next button to ensure I've had time to actually read it. Then I can leave the screen and go get some tea while the time is elapsing and when the time has elapsed, I'll come back and click next. Unless they figure out a way to make sure I'm not idle by ensuring mouse movement within the application. Then that would suck and I'll have to figure a work around.
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"Y.T.'s mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this memo, and her reaction, based on the time spent, will go something like this:
Less than 10 mm. Time for an employee conference and possible attitude counseling.
10-14 min. Keep an eye on this employee; may be developing slipshod attittide.
14-15.61 mm. Employee is an efficient worker, may sometimes miss important details.
Exactly 15.62 mm. Smartass. Needs attitude counseling.
15.63-16 mm. Asswipe. Not to be trusted.
16-18 mm. Employee is a methodical worker, may sometimes get hung up on minor details.
More than 18 mm. Check the security videotape, see just what this employee was up to (e.g., possible unauthorized restroom break).
Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary."
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rofl
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Response to: Overcast on Apr 23rd, 2012 @ 7:42am
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That and they're written up in dense legalese that satisfies judges, privacy commissioners and so on that they're actually doing the minimum allowed by law.
They're kinda like the parking stub that says they'll rent you a space for a couple of hours but the owners of the lot aren't responsible if someone drives off with your Jag.
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Instead, they put up 50 pages of legalese that translates to: "we don't take your privacy seriously at all and share all your data," ensuring even the one in a million guy who's actually bored enough to try to read it probably won't understand a word.
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Not all are complex.
http://xpda.com/junkmail/privacy.htm
(no rights reserved.)
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Median
Wrong. Median is defined as exactly halfway between the minimum and maximum observed value. So, in this case, 3906.5 words, which I'd be much more likely to approximate as "around 4000 words" than as "around 2500 words".
Mean is the average of all the values. It's more likely that this is what was "around 2500 words".
Mode is the individual number that comes up the most often.
If you had 99 copies of a document saying "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" and one document of 100,000 words, you'd have these values for word count statistics:
Median: 49,995.5
Mean: 1008.91
Mode: 9
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Re: Median
The median is found by sorting all results, and picking the middle one.
If you had 99 copies of a document saying "the quck brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" and one document of 100,000 words, you'd have these values for word count statistics:
Median: 9
Mode: 9
Mean: 1008.91
"Around 2500 words" sounds like a very plausible median to me.
tl;dr Learn basic stats.
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I was going to correct the poster myself but you did it quite well.
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Hi I make up definitions to words and attack you for not knowing the meaning of them
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Creative Commons for Licensing?
But all in all, a hard problem. People's privacy expectations on websites are informed by a mix of the UI design and their experiences with other websites. And the idea of being used over a misleading UI would terrify any designer.
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I have followed this policy since the 90's when i first got online, and will continue even if they make it illegal(as some people would like)
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owning houses
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Re: owning houses
You've clearly never been to the UK, let alone bought a house here.
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