Time to Read The Fine Print
By: Cullen Munson
Digital privacy is important because it can protect your identity and personal information from being hacked. It seems like today, more than ever users like myself are sharing more personal data online without even knowing. But why? Why would we want to do that? Privacy in my opinion is like a key, a key that unlocks all aspects of yourself. We should be in charge of what people can or can’t discover about ourselves. Lastly, it’s important because without digital privacy your identity and reputation could be tarnished.
I often am the person that scrolls to the bottom of the page and looks for the button “accept” when a terms of service contract pops up. But one thing that I learned this week and was surprising to me came from the podcast Do You Read Terms Of Service Contracts? Not Many Do, Research Shows (NPR, 2016). “It would take the average user 40 minutes a day to read all of — and that’s every day — to read all of the privacy and terms of service policies that we encounter related to the different services that we’re using all the time.” (Obar) I think this ties into how far we are willing to go to protect our digital privacy. Are you willing to take the extra time and read the small print?
In this article they also talked about a study that was conducted for a fake social networking app, in this app’s terms of service contract they had in small print “a firstborn clause suggesting that if you agreed to these policies that as a form of payment, you’d be giving up a first-born child.” (Obar) Would you like to know what percent of these people didn’t raise any concern over the contract? Well, 98 percent of the participants that took the study didn’t. This leaves me to think that the next time I come across a terms of agreement contract, maybe I will take the extra time to read to make sure I am agreeing to the proper legal cover…
We all want to use social platforms that are going to protect our information and provide a safe environment for us to create and engage. But social media networks aren’t the only digital technologies taking our information. What if you found out your very own smart TV was also taking your information. A case study I found was an article called “Is Your TV Spying On You” by Dave Lewis. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davelewis/2015/02/10/is-your-tv-spying-on-you/#32d9927636e6
Take a look at the privacy statement to below from Samsung… Actually wait, don’t! Because would you have taken the time to read it if it popped up on your TV? My guess is probably not. Third party companies are granted access to store your data and take away from your digital privacy. Where do we draw the line? How do we draw the line? Maybe it’s time to just read the small print..
