Terms and conditions, that's what we sign (unknowingly)

Every day we sign up to contracts without even realising it: just open a new social account, make a purchase on an e-commerce website, tick the box for a privacy policy or subscribe to a streaming platform. A quick, almost automatic and often underestimated gesture, which hides a series of conditions that are also complicated to interpret and are rarely read in full.

Shedding light on this topic is a recent study conducted by Truffe.net and entitled 'The hidden clauses of contracts', which involved using ChatGPT to analyse the terms of service, cookie and privacy policies of the most popular social networks and platforms in order to identify the most insidious but nevertheless constantly ignored by users.

From WhatsApp to Dropbox, the analysis took into account as many as twenty different services, revealing that Microsoft's Service Agreement would take as much as 93 minutes to read, followed by Snapchat (71 minutes) and Apple (46 minutes), although the most ambiguous and difficult-to-understand clauses are those of WhatsApp and Facebook, although they take just under half an hour to read. For instance, with regard to Meta's messaging service, the study points out that the most complex conditions concern data use and sharing with third parties: personal data could be shared with external companies and, in the event of problems with the service, it would not be possible to complain, in addition to the fact that terms could change without notice. Facebook's terms and conditions, on the other hand, would be less clear regarding rights to content and intellectual property, the suspension or removal of accounts translating into possible profile closures without notice or storage of personal data even after an account has been deactivated. Then there is Snapchat and the ambiguous terms regarding artificial intelligence: according to the analysis, a superficial reading could give personal data to the AI without the user's knowledge.

Obviously, streaming and e-commerce platforms are also to be taken care of. Reading Spotify's Privacy Policy, for example, would take about 32 minutes with 67% of unclear clauses, followed by Netflix with a percentage only two points lower: acceptance without reading these terms could lead to personal data being shared with third parties in addition to profiling for targeted advertising. And then there are the terms of Apple Media Services and Disney+ with 69% and 60% of suspicious clauses respectively, requiring more than 46 and 18 minutes of reading: in this case, however, the most important parts would concern price changes, account suspension and aspects affecting the user experience.

To conclude, Eli Carosi, editor and fact checker of Truffa.net as well as an expert on online scams and security, explains: 'Accepting a digital contract without reading it is the equivalent of signing a blank piece of paper. Even spending a few minutes on the key clauses can make a difference, especially on personal data, content and legal rights'. Therefore, it is always the expert who advises to search the terms of service for words such as data, licence, suspension or modification, to consult the privacy and cookie policies and, before accepting a contract, to use synthetic or artificial intelligence tools to analyse the content so that the most uncertain clauses can emerge.