Would YOU sign up for these terms and conditions?
“Alexa’s toolbar service collects and stores information about the web pages you view, the data you enter in online forms and search fields, and, with versions 5.0 and higher, the products you purchase online while using the toolbar service.”
Actually, I haven’t quoted exactly. The original is ALL IN UPPER CASE WHICH, WHILE MAKING IT MORE IMPORTANT, MAKES IT HARDER TO READ AND DIGEST (since we don’t usually read capital letters).
The T&Cs also go on to say that the information collected is personally identifiable.
Unless I am completely mistaken, if you click ‘Agree’ you are giving Alexa permission to record and use any information you put in any form online and permission to build a record of your online searching and buying decisions.
On this website we’ve already seen plenty of scams exploiting the willingness of ordinary people to sign forms on which the small print committing them to several years of absurdly expensive scam ’services’ is plainly visible. God alone knows what we agree to on a daily basis in the ever-present ‘Terms and Conditions’ boxes we click without reading or so much as a second thought.
Is it that we are so greedy for the ‘pay-off’ that we have lost our critical faculties? Is it that the way in which the data we give up in these transactions is used so subtly that we never make the connection between the privacy we signed away and the cold calls, the spam and the junk mail coming into our homes?
I suspect that one day a lot of us are going to really, really regret clicking all those ‘I Agree’ checkboxes.
Hi Rosie, sorry all out of Spotify invites
Good luck finding one
Hello, just read the new spotify rules and would highly appreciate if you could send me an invite. Much thanks.