The Truth Behind Privacy Policies
Every day on the internet on numerous sites, we click the button “accept” after seeing this long-winded privacy policy. But whoever reads every single word of the policy? Do we even know what we are consenting to when clicking “accept”? Privacy policies are legal statements that specify what companies can do with personal data from users, how this data is processed, and the purpose for collecting that data. Although some privacy policies are written in fair manners and do not use your information maliciously, this is becoming increasingly rare. Privacy policies are becoming significantly unfair, and companies use various ways to “trick” the user.
The most apparent way that privacy policies deceive users is by using legal jargon. Why are privacy policies written so that only lawyers can only understand them? We rarely see plain language in privacy policies. Initiatives to use manageable language in privacy policies are growing, but many companies still have confusing language. According to a study done by Time Magazine in 2015 evaluating seven well-known company privacy policies’ language, the two worst privacy policies from those they looked at included Lyft and Twitter, two widespread companies. The study explained how Twitter’s privacy policy had long, hard-to-read sentences. Meanwhile, Lyft’s privacy policy supposedly consisted of unclear language, and “everything about [it] screams, ‘We don’t want you to read this!’” Google, a massive company, was praised for its privacy policy in this study. This result shows that we are moving in the right direction, but many privacy policies still use complex language, hindering readability.
Secondly, privacy policies are widely inaccessible. Occasionally, we see a large pop-up on our screens about a privacy policy, but privacy policies are hidden, occasionally, on the website’s footer. If a user has to search for a privacy policy, it is an indication that the company does not want you to find the privacy policy. Additionally, if privacy policies are ever updated, which they are frequently, only a handful of companies let you know. Companies like Google do send you emails letting you know about updates, but it pretty much stops there. Many smaller or less known companies do not notify you when they are making changes. This gap of notification means you could be approving something you did not even know was there. Overall, the inaccessible nature of privacy policies further shows the cunning composition.
Generally, privacy policies have many controversial issues, including formatting, fair processing, and compliance with federal laws in addition to the above two problems. Nonetheless, privacy policies prove to be an invaluable tool to companies and users during this Digital Age because we can know how our data is being used, which is a subject that needs to be valued. Calls for increased laws surrounding privacy policies have been partially successful and should continue to protect one of our most valuable assets: our data.
