“I Agree†We have all, while online, clicked on a box with these words. Whether it is registering for a new social media account or just trying to get to our bank statements, one almost cannot visit a website today without eventually being asked to agree to a listed set of “Terms and Conditions.”
What we fail to oversee is that by blindly clicking on such boxes, we may be binding ourselves to legally enforceable contracts with the online service provider as we are unaware of the strings that come attached to each T’s & C’s.
Failure to take account of Terms & Conditions could hurt us and we may end up paying unnecessary bills or even see our private information go public. We could also become easy targets for hackers and cyber criminals, all because we signed up for a free email service.
Why don’t we read it? For one, most terms and conditions agreements are crazy-long. According to a Fairer Finance survey, small print for some companies now runs to more than 30,000 words (the length of a short novel) and, unsurprisingly, 73% of people admit to not reading all the fine print. Of those who do, only 17% say they understand it.
To highlight the dangers of public Internet, an experiment was conducted by a tech security firm, F-Secure. Londoners were asked to agree to terms and conditions as they logged on to use free Wi-Fi in a cafe in a busy financial district and at a site close to the houses of parliament.
The terms included a “Herod clause”, under which the Wi-Fi was provided only if “the recipient agreed to assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity”.
Several Britons agreed to give up their eldest child in return for the use of free Wi-Fi!
The experiment was aimed to highlight “the total disregard for computer security by people when they are mobile”.
German ethical hacking company, SySS built device used in the study: a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot small enough to be carried in a handbag for around 200 euros ($254). In just 30 minutes, 250 devices connected to the hotspot – some of them doing so automatically due to their settings.
The company was able to collect the text of emails they sent, the email addresses of the sender and recipient, and the password of the sender.
“At best, your device is only leaking information about you – at worst, your passwords are being spilled into a publicly accessible space… anybody on the network can see your information,” said F-Secure Security Advisor Sean Sullivan.
A similar experiment was carried out as April fool’s Day joke by Gamestation which confirmed that people don’t read the T’s & C’s. The computer game retailer revealed that it legally owns the souls of thousands of online shoppers, thanks to a clause in the terms and conditions agreed to by online shoppers.
Astonishingly, even the companies don’t read their own fine print. The best of it was made by Dmitry Agarkov who was unhappy with his credit card contract. He rewrote it and his bank duly signed it. As Dmitry had authored the perfect credit card, the result was – no fees, no interest, no limit, and a clause forcing the bank to pay him if it broke the contract! Apparently an out-of-court agreement was reached.
Just agreeing to the T’s & C’s can also make your information public. Hackers and Cyber-criminals use free Wi-Fi to steal personal data of people.
A survey by investment specialist, Skandia said that 21% of people in the survey had suffered as a result of ticking the terms and conditions box without having done their homework. One in 10 found that they were locked into a longer contract than expected because they signed up without reading the small print, and one in 20 lost money by not being able to cancel or amend hotel or holiday bookings.
Still, people fly over the terms and conditions thinking, “I’d rather deal with the consequences of blindly signing this than have to read it.â€