EFF Tracking Changes To Major Company Terms Of Service
from the watch-what-you-change... dept
The EFF has launched a neat little project, called TOSback, where it tracks any changes to online service agreements from a bunch of different well known companies, such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and eBay. Considering that some of these companies have been known to quietly change their terms without making the details all that public, it seems like this could be quite a useful service -- at least in getting these companies to recognize that they should clearly explain why they're changing their terms and what those changes really mean.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: terms of service, tracking
Companies: eff
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Leave my broadband alone!!!!!!!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Just The Delta, Please
Thus, when ToS change, what consumers really want to know is just the delta. But service providers provide 32 pages of 6 point font ToS, written in legaldygook, and when they change two important lines on p.26, they still send you the entire new 32 page ToS to "inform" you of the changes, and occasionally to get your "non opt out" consent.
As a result, it is seldom worth it for us to read the original ToS, and certianly not any revisions. Too much work for too little useful info.
If the service that EFF provides is to just tell us the delta, that would be huge.
-------------------
Separate gripe: When I book flights on United Air well in advance, they often change the flights prior to my travel date. Their stupid system can't just tell me the delta, nope they've got to send me the whole booking info dataset. So instead of:
"Mr. Kerton your flight from ORD to YYZ on June 21st now leaves at 15:20, not 15:00 as previously scheduled. There are no other changes in this trip."
They send me an email, two pages long, with the current flight times and details for each of my four legs (two out, two return). It then becomes MY job to print out my prior travel plans, and match them to the new ones like the kids game of "spot the changes between these two pictures". I need to identify the delta myself, confirm I have the entire delta, then launch into Outlook to change the calendar entry for one flight by 20 minutes. It's about 10 minutes work, that I'm pretty sure their computer could do much faster.
To make it even more annoying, the flight leaves 30 minutes after they said anyways, or they get you in late and you miss your connection :-(
AFAIK, United is the master of good data in, garbage out. Their systems are rife with useful data, but their customer info systems spout out incorrect, stale data all the time.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Just The Delta, Please
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Did you actually TRY the "view changes"?
Shining example, Facebook change #9. Only change is the address, all the way at the bottom.
I don't want to complain too much, it's still a good thing. It's just that my interpretation of "view changes" is "only show me the changes."
[ link to this | view in thread ]