If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
This sounds kinda obvious to me but there's some recent research from Carnegie Mellon University into the subject that's got potential to be eye opening to a degree. They came to the conclusion that the average user would take 200 hours to read through the privacy policies of the sites they visit in the course of one year. And since everything these days is translated in to money, they also determined that this would have a hypothetical cost to the US economy of $365 billion, more than half the value of the big money bailout package.
It's obvious because anybody who has ever taken the time to read a privacy policy in full will know that because they're almost always written in legalese, they're rather difficult to read and overly verbose. Never let it be said that a lawyer will say something in 200 words when he could use two thousand.
Privacy policies need to be brief and easy to understand. For example, like many sites, this one has a "policies" page. There's a section in it covering my privacy policy. It's three short paragraphs long and I think it's clear enough. What's great is that I didn't have to get somebody to translate it into legalese and make it thirty times longer.
Is it any wonder why most people just click through a privacy policy or End User License Agreement without bothering to read it? Who want's to spend ten to twenty minutes trying desperately to translate legalese in their head? I for one have enough migraine headaches without adding to the problem that way!
Technorati Tags: privacy policies, privacy, hard to read, too long, legalese
I see a box down below that says “a feed could not be found at http://usenet-tutorials.com” – would you email me and give me a link on how to set one up? I’d like to have one about usenet. I’ve written some excellent content.. ie: http://usenet-tutorials.com/about-usenet-what-is-usenet.html
Thanks,
Issac
By the way, your site also does a neat job of trying to make UseNet look like the world’s greatest free download system when in fact binaries newsgroups are fast on their way out.
Also, for the record, I wouldn’t touch newsleecher with a ten foot hard drive. XNews is the only way to fly.
SuperSearch takes all the work out of searching on usenet.. Even though XNews is free it just doesn’t have the built in SuperSearch I love!!
Issac
The dropping of binary newsgroups will allow UseNet to revert to something closer to what it started out to be. It was *never* intended to be a means of downloading (mostly illegal) files.
Thanks & Regards,
Kate
These policies should follow the K.I.S.S. principle and tell me what I need to know in terms I can understand. Tell me your data retention policy, how you use my information, and other such information. Just get to the point…
The worst, in my opinion, is how easily a privacy policy can be changed. I understand that sometimes it must be done, and I being flexible and able to adapt to the times is important. These policies can be changed and go unnoticed. I know ISPs change their policies regularly and do not formally tell their customers…they just post an obscure link on their site.