‘I ain’t got time for that stuff!’
When was the last time you read the ‘Terms of Service’ for anything you signed up for? Did you read Facebook’s? How about LinkedIn? Uber? Your local ‘click and collect’ grocery store?
Let’s face it, we’re unlikely to read them unless we have one or two needs:
- We can’t sleep and don’t want to take a sleeping pill; or
- We’re trying to work out if we can sue the business
The rest of the time, we just click that little box that says ‘I agree to the Terms and Conditions of (name your poison)’. Come on now – ‘fess up!
How long is a long TOS agreement?
How long can a TOS get? Well, if you signed up to Jesus via the King James version, that’s 783,137 words. You probably haven’t finished that yet so let’s consider the United States Constitution at 4,543 words. How many Americans have read that cover to cover? (I’m fairly sure Mr. Trump hasn’t.)
Speaking of ‘the man’, Twitter expected him to read 5,633 words before tweeting his first 160 character rant. I’ll bet he didn’t.
How about Uber? A heart-wrenching 5,658 words! I hear you bro… you only want to go from A to B!
And then we get to Microsoft’s TOS – a mind-bending 15,260 words that would confuse most lawyers!
And a ‘short’ TOS?
Well, everything is relative but this site is a painful 3,008 words, every one of which our lawyers say we have to have. But of the majors, hats off to Instagram with just 2,451 words versus parent Facebook’s 4,132!
Amuse yourself by checking out the exciting reading you have waiting for you one sleepless night:
The TOS bottom line?
You may not have time to read these agreements but the bottom line is that you are pretty much signing away all your rights to privacy, litigation or restitution in any way. The fact that you haven’t read them is no protection once you check that agreement box.
That should keep you awake for a while!
