Do you really know what you’ve agreed to when you set up a new email account or try to make career connections at a social-networking site?
There’s a lot of fine print that you may not have paid much attention to. Networking sites, for example, typically claim ownership of the emails, pictures or videos that users post on their sites. Yet, users often don’t realize this because it’s buried deep in privacy policies that can run thousands of words long.
While most of the terms of these agreements can be fairly innocuous, there are times when web sites cross the line. Facebook recently found that out the hard way. Earlier this month, the popular social networking site changed its privacy rules, giving itself the right to own or use any information posted by its users — even after the information has been deleted. When word got out about the change, users revolted — and Facebook recanted, reverting back to its old rules.
SmartMoney.com set out to learn just what you’re committing to when you click the “I agree” box at some popular web sites. While some, like Twitter and Google’s Gmail, let users retain all rights and ownership of their information, others not only have the right to own and make money off users’ content, but also include indemnification clauses that say the user is on the hook to cover any legal expenses if the site is involved in a lawsuit based on that content.
To give a sense of how much legalese you’ll need to wade through to figure out the terms at these sites, we measured the length of their policies in words. After reviewing each site’s terms and consulting with privacy experts and web advocates who study user policies, we also assigned each site a privacy rating of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most consumer-friendly. (Want to decipher the fine print yourself? Read story to learn what you need to know.)
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