Ts and Cs
When is the last time you read the Terms of Conditions of an app or a Web site or even your Internet or mobile phone contract? For most people the answer is so long ago it may as well be never. And there is a good reason for that. Time. As one extreme example, if you want to use an Amazon Kindle, the 73,198-word agreement that you are offered before clicking “I Accept” would take an average reader up to nine hours to read (not allowing for toilet or coffee breaks). Oh and there is that little issue of the fact that some of the clauses breach Australian laws. Facebook is currently being investigated by Germany’s Federal Cartel Office (FCO) to see whether Facebook’s Terms of Service qualify as extortion. The argument put forward is that due to Facebook being so pervasive, it doesn’t have the right to log certain private data (used by Facebook to help generate ads revenue of $73.7 million per day). Whoever doesn’t agree to the conditions will be locked out of using Facebook and therefore the fear of social isolation allows Facebook to exploit its users. It is an interesting argument and one that the regulators around the world will be watching.
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To illustrate the point further, a company in the UK tried an experiment to see just how many people read the Terms and Conditions. Purple is a company that specialises in running Wi-Fi hotspots for various organisations. Over a two-week period, they inserted a ridiculous Community Service Clause into their Terms of Service agreement. For your free Wi-Fi, you agreed to provide hugs to stray cats and dogs; clean up animal waste from local parks; scrape chewing gum off streets; relieve sewer blockages and clean portable toilets at local festivals and events. For 1,000 hours! The conditions also noted that if you contacted Purple and pointed out that you didn’t want to comply with these conditions, you won a prize.
The number of prizes given away? One! That was opposed to 22,000 that presumably inadvertently agreed to the community work. I was amazed that they managed to get one that read the document.
For Purple, this was both an illustration of what we all knew but a clever publicity stunt. Presumably the toilets and parks in Manchester will be very clean over the coming months – if they bother to enforce the clause. Purple was also using this stunt to bring forward the fact that the EU has now adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which relates to data privacy laws across Europe but is also intended to simplify Terms and Conditions in the hope that people may actually read them.
One constant issue we see from regulators in our ever-changing IT world is the time it takes for regulators to try and catch up with technology. The GDPR is a perfect example. The preparation and debate for the GDPR started in 2012. It was approved by the EU Parliament on 14 April 2016. The enforcement date is 25 May 2018 by which time an organisation must be compliant or face heavy fines. That is six years from the time that there was recognition there was a problem through to the final enforcement. In six years, the face of technology has changed many times over. Technology companies talk of product lifecycles in terms of a year or two. Mobile phone companies are expected to bring out a new flagship model every year. With technology changing at this rate, regulators simply cannot take six years to bring in new legislation. By the time May 2018 rolls around, the GDPR will be out of date. Bottom line with those pesky terms and conditions. Have a skim. Take a look. Be aware of what you are agreeing to – but good luck if you don’t agree with some of the clauses and hope that the company will make an exception for you!
App of the Week: GetHuman. Unfortunately it is not perfect for the Australian market yet, as it focuses on US companies, but I love the concept. This app saves you time and frustration whenever you need to call your large company with an automated phone system. It helps you go through the phone maze in the best possible way and actually speak to a real human!
