Researchers Aleecia McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor of
Carnegie Mellon University looked at online privacy policies and
how long it would take to read them. While one policy they looked
at was just 144 words long, they found one policy on a popular site
that ran to 7,669 words, around 15 pages of text.
The average length of privacy policies used by the 75 most
popular US websites is 2,500 words, the research found. Using the
reading speed of 250 words per minute which is typical for those
who have completed secondary education, the average policy would
take 10 minutes to read.
The length of privacy policies is often cited as one reason they
are so commonly ignored. "Studies show privacy policies are hard to
read, read infrequently, and do not support rational decision
making," said the researchers, acknowledging the fact that the
policies are rarely read.
The researchers also investigated how quickly people could read
privacy policies when they were just skimming it for pertinent
details. They timed 93 people as they skimmed a 934-word privacy
policy and answered multiple choice questions on its content.
Though some people took under a minute and others up to 42
minutes, the bulk of the subjects of the research took between
three and six minutes to skim the policy, which itself was just
over a third of the size of the average policy.
The researchers used their data to estimate how much it costs US
citizens to read the privacy policy of every site they visit once a
year if their time was charged for. Were people to actually read
the policies and charge for that time it would cost $652 billion a
year.
Though that figure has limited usefulness, because people rarely
read whole policies and cannot charge anyone for the time it takes
to do this, the researchers concluded that readers who do conduct a
cost-benefit analysis might decide not to read any policies.
"Preliminary work from a small pilot study in our laboratory
revealed that some Internet users believe their only serious risk
online is they may lose up to $50 if their credit card information
is stolen. For people who think that is their primary risk, our
point estimates show the value of their time to read policies far
exceeds this risk. Even for our lower bound estimates of the value
of time, it is not worth reading privacy policies though it may be
worth skimming them," said the research.
"This leads to two implications. First, Internet users likely do
not understand the risks to their privacy … second, if the privacy
community can find ways to reduce the time cost of reading
policies, it may be easier to convince Internet users to do so. For
example, if we can help people move from needing to read policies
word-for-word and only skim policies by providing useful headings,
or if we can offer ways to hide all but relevant information and
thus reduce the effective length of the policies, more people may
be willing to read them," it said.
The researchers concluded that in order for web users' privacy
to be protected, some regulation may be necessary.
"Some corporations take the view that their users should read
privacy policies and if they fail to do so, it is evidence of lack
of concern about privacy," they said. "Instead, we counter that
websites need to do a better job of conveying their practices in
useable ways, which includes reducing the time it takes to read
policies. If corporations cannot do so, regulation may be necessary
to provide basic privacy protections."
Struan Robertson, a technology lawyer with Pinsent Masons and
editor of OUT-LAW.COM, said that in the UK, organisations should
layer their privacy policies.
"Certain information should be given without the need for any
clicks," he said. "This is the data protection notice and its
appearance should be a mandatory screen in any online process. The
additional details can go into a privacy policy."
"Before a user submits any personal details at a site, this
notice should identify the data controller (generally the company
behind the website), the purposes for which they will use the
details, and anything else needed to ensure fairness," said
Robertson.
"This should be an unavoidable step, to comply with the Data
Protection Act. However, we recommend that sites give additional
information in a privacy policy, accessed by a link from this
notice and through privacy policy links on each page of the site,"
he said.
"This layering of information is important to compliance and
also usability. As long as information is presented in a way that
lets users skim the essentials, it will not matter to the site's
compliance if the user decides to read no further – though it's a
sensible step to offer the additional information as reassurance to
those who want it," he said.
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