Deceptive Websites' Privacy Policies & Terms of Service - Brokerblogger

While Google collects more personal information than any single website, most of it is search history.  Kevin Bankston, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in "Google balances privacy, reach",  "Your search history shows your associations, beliefs, perhaps your medical problems. The things you Google for define you,.." 

Yet, I'm more concerned now with online sellers having a Privacy Policy and TOS that are so lengthy and confusing that most people don't take the time to read them.  If they did, they still wouldn't be sure how to interpret them.  These things are supposed to build TRUST, when in many cases they are designed to be confusing, deceptive, and ambiguous "SMALL PRINT".  In fact, I think point number 8 of "Ten Things You Need to Know About Reducing Unwanted E-mail" is right on target.  Here is what is says.

"Never give your e-mail address unless you really, really trust that relationship. Reading a Web site’s privacy policy will not help you, even if it promises to not share your information. No privacy policy, or firewall, or security system, or intent will stop a rogue employee from stealing a CD with your information on it. Privacy policies can change for any number of reasons, such as business needs or a change of ownership. Privacy Policies are designed to protect companies, NOT YOU."

As for TOS, this "[nycwireless] Verizon Fiber to the home - Terms of Service = awesomely bad" says it all!  Check out what they say about sections 8.3 and 8.4 of FiOS's TOS.  I blogged about section 8.4 in "FiOS Does Inconspicuous "No Turning Back To DSL" Disclosure" regarding their "Verizon Online Policies", which is the name of the link you have to figure out is really their "TOS".

In 10/05, CR WebWatch published the results of a national survey in "Leap Of Faith: Using The Internet Despite The Dangers" with an interesting "Executive Summary" on page 3.  The continual degradation of consumer online trust from this 8/19/99 article, "Consumers Don't Trust Web Sites" is there for good reason.  For example, this major certification authority site called TRUSTe has in their Privacy Policy something that may be very innocent and truthful, but how is the consumer to know for sure?  It says in the "Personal Information Sharing " section "From time to time we employ service providers to perform various functions involving personal information on our behalf. These service providers are prohibited from using this personal information for any other purpose."  Their intent may be 100% honorable, but how can their clients or the consumer be 100% trusting?  Do they have the resources to closely monitor everything their "service providers" do? 

While I'm not picking on TRUSTe specifically for this statement in their privacy policy, as it is sort of standard text in many privacy policies, I will be doing another blog post soon on "authority certificates" and "seals of approval" in which some questionalble things have happened with TRUSTe, according to Ben Edelman who wrote "Adverse Selection in Online 'Trust' Certifications".

7/30/06 UPDATE:  Warner Bros. doesn't read or totally understand the "fine print" (probably in Zango's TOS), so you get this headline:  "Warner Bros. To Break With Zango Over Adware Links To Adult Material".  So, even large corporations can fall prey to deceptive/misleading TOS.  See "paidContent.org" Warner Bros. Report.

Cartoon courtesy of "Microdoc News" (out of business) by way of Google Blogoscoped.