In an eWeek article Evan Schuman warns users and gives a great opinion on big business hiding information in long terms of service agreements in legalize. On top of that, they also make it so hard to read that you just click “I agree”
Here is an excerpt that gets to the gist of the problem:
Here’s the consensus of what happened: Sears created something called My SHC Community, which Sears describes as a member-feedback-based online community.
To encourage consumers to join, it offers the following carrots: “It’s a community that connects shoppers like you to SHC employees, including the most senior executives, so that together we can build a better shopping experience. In exchange for participating in the community, members will have access to free planning and budgeting tools, special forums to express their views and ideas and will receive exclusive offers and promotions. Members are also eligible to win cash and merchandise prizes via sweepstakes that occur regularly throughout the year.”
As part of the project, Sears installs a program from ComScore onto the consumer’s PC. Is the consumer asked for permission first? That’s an interpretation issue. Sears—correctly—says that the consumer first has to agree.
But Harvard’s Edelman said the information is vague and hidden deep within a very long “privacy statement and user license agreement,” a document made even more dense because it is presented in a very small scrolling window.
The “2,971 words of text, shown in a small scroll box with just ten lines visible, requires fully 54 on-screen pages to view in full,” Edelman wrote. “The tenth page admits that the application ‘monitors all of the Internet behavior that occurs on the computer on which you install the application, including … filling a shopping basket, completing an application form, or checking your…personal financial or health information.’ That’s remarkably comprehensive tracking—but mentioned in a disclosure few users are likely to find, since few users will read through to page 10 of the license.”
This is another example of how to piss off consumers and it comes from Sears who is not a top retail company anymore. I guess this will drop them even further down the ladder.
Filed under: Computer Security, Computer Software, Spyware
