Overheard my neighbor say he never reads privacy policies and that got me thinking

I was at a coffee shop downtown last Tuesday and this guy next to me was telling his friend he just clicks "agree" on every privacy popup without reading a single word. He said it takes too long and everyone collects your data anyway. I always kinda did the same but hearing it out loud made me realize how lazy I am about my own info. Has anyone else actually found something scary in a privacy policy that made them change their habits?

3 comments

3 Comments

theawest13d ago

Is there really any harm in just clicking agree on that stuff? I mean, think about it. Companies have been collecting data on us for decades through loyalty cards, credit card transactions, and even just walking around with a smartphone that pings towers. The privacy policy is just them being upfront about it, not some secret trap. @margaret_nelson, I get your concern about vague language, but honestly, those legal terms exist because the real threat isn't some random app selling your info to a shady company. The threat is that without those broad "third party partners" clauses, they couldn't share data with basic stuff like payment processors or cloud storage services you already use every day. I've read a few policies in full, and it's usually boring stuff about how they use your email to send you receipts or share anonymized data for analytics with companies like Google. Seems like the real risk is wasting hours of your life reading pages of legal text when nothing in there is going to shock you.

jessicamiller24d ago

Oh man, that guy is totally me too honestly. I remember one time I actually tried to read a privacy policy for a weather app and it was like 20 pages long talking about sharing data with "third party partners" and I had no clue who any of those are. Feels like they make them so long on purpose so you just give up and click agree.

margaret_nelson24d ago

You mentioned "third party partners" and that's actually the thing that gets me too. But I'm pretty sure most of those privacy policies are written to be intentionally vague so they can cover themselves legally, not just to be long. It's like they want to hide the real data sharing in plain sight with that kind of language.