blog/data/2019-12-07-terms-turn-users-away.txt

   1 Title: When terms and policy turn users away
   2 Tags: english, personvern
   3 Date: 2019-12-07 21:15
   4
   5 <p>When asked to accept terms of use and privacy policies that state
   6 it will to remove rights I otherwise had or accept unreasonable terms
   7 undermining my privacy, I choose away the service.  I simply do not
   8 have the conscience to accept terms I have no indention of upholding.
   9 But how are the system and service providers to know how many people
  10 they scared away?  Normally I just quietly walk away.  But today, I
  11 tried a new approach.  I sent the following email (removing the
  12 specifics, as I am not out to take the specific service in question)
  13 to the service provider I decided to not use, to at least give them
  14 one data point on how many users are unhappy with their terms:</p>
  15
  16 <blockquote>
  17 From: Petter Reinholdtsen
  18 <br>Subject: When terms of use turn users away
  19 <br>To: [contact@some.site]
  20 <br>Date: Sat, 07 Dec 2019 16:30:56 +0100
  21
  22 <p>Dear [Site Owner],</p>
  23
  24 <p>I was eager to test the system, as it seemed like a fun and
  25 interesting application of [some] technology, but after reading the
  26 terms of use and privacy policy on &lt;URL:
  27 https://www.[some.site]/terms-of-use &gt; and &lt;URL:
  28 https://www.[some.site]/privacy-policy &gt; I want you to know that I
  29 decided to turn away.  There were several provisions in the terms and
  30 policy turning me off, but the final term that convinced me was being
  31 asked to sign away my right to reverse engineer.</p>
  32
  33 <p>--
  34 <br>Happy hacking
  35 <br>Petter Reinholdtsen</p>
  36 </blockquote>
  37
  38 <p>I do not expect much to come out of it, but sharing it here in case
  39 others want to give something similar a try too.  If companies
  40 discover their terms scare away enough people, perhaps they will be
  41 improved...</p>
  42
  43 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  44 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  45 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>