EFF launches TOSBack TOS tracker
p2pnet news view P2P | Advertising:- Most web users don’t read “Terms of Service” site policies which define how Internet businesses interact with you and use your personal information, the EFF points out correctly.
Nor do they understand the terms are constantly changing.
To remedy that, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has launched TOSBack, a TOS tracker for Facebook, Google, eBay, and others.
At www.TOSBack.org, “you can see a real-time feed of changes and updates to more than three dozen polices from the Internet’s most popular online services,” says the foundation, going on »»»
Clicking on an update brings you to a side-by-side before-and-after comparison, highlighting what has been removed from the policy and what has been added.
The issue of terms-of-service changes — and how and why they are made — was highlighted earlier this year when Facebook modified its terms of use. Facebook users worried that the change gave the company the right to use members’ content indefinitely. After a user revolt, Facebook announced that it would restore the former terms while it worked through the concerns users had raised.
Internet users are increasingly trusting websites with everything from their photos to their ‘friends lists’ to their calendar, “and sometimes even their medical information,”observes the EFF’s Fred von Lohmann.
EFF – EFF Launches TOSBack – A ‘Terms of Service’ Tracker for Facebook, Google, eBay, and More, June 4, 2009
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June 4th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Thanks EFF for another useful contribution to all of us. The interconnectivity between social networking websites reached a mindblowing proportion. The legal aspects of Terms and Rights is going to feed many, many lawyer-families for decades.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Somewhere there’s a “tossing off” joke in there, I just can’t think of it right now…
June 4th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
How’sabout……..
Companies like Facebook and Google don’t give a toss about our privacy.
June 5th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I don’t really think this is going to do anything substantive.
1. All of these so-called “contracts” we sign — not just online, but everywhere else — usually contain some clause to the effect that ONE party (them) can change the terms at any time WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE. See the problem? No matter how many different iterations of a given “contract” the EFF assembles for something like this, the corporations using such contracts are legally permitted to keep changing them at whim, on a second-by-second basis, in principle.
I submit that the “with or without notice” provision effectively nullifies the fundamental basis and purpose of contract-law, itself:
Contractual agreements presuppose that both parties — at least theoretically — know the conditions of the contract (which implies, at the very least, that any change should require “notice”).
Nice gimmick for the EFF, but it doesn’t address the fundamental issue involved: “with or without notice” provisions make a mockery of contract-law itself.
In the same vein, protests against particular instances of corporate malfeasance do nothing to address the basic problem, which is corporations AS SUCH — with their limited liability, legal “personhood”, and profit-seeking at all costs, human/social/environmental “externalities” notwithstanding.
Anything short of that, is just nibbling at the edges.
June 5th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
@Henry:
I don’t know about the US, but here in Canada, we still have the one stipulation that makes these TOS contracts worthless – “informed consent”. Without informed consent, they can’t bind you to the revised clauses.
That’s why I still have “unlimited”, even though Bell has gone through dozens of TOS changes since I first signed up.