How many times have you ticked a box stating you have read and agreed to certain terms and conditions? And how many times have you actually read these terms? We bet the answers to these questions differ heavily. But you’re not the only one. A Deloitte survey found that 91% of people consent to terms of service without reading them. For younger people this rate was even higher: 97% did not read.
Lately, we ran into a service that tries to fix this discrepancy. ToS;DR, which stands for Terms of Service; Didn’t Read, inspired by the internet acronym TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read) provides you with summaries of the terms and conditions of almost every big company in the world. They even offer a browser extension that gives you a notification if you land on a website with very bad terms.
In a society that’s increasing in complexity and in lack of trust towards institutions, ToS;DR is providing people with a tool to take back control at least a little bit. We wonder whether companies themselves will start offering summaries of their terms and conditions at some point. In our opinion, it would certainly increase their credibility.
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