qualitative findings suggest that participants signed up for .
” how many times in your life — heck , how many times just this month , or this year — have you hovered over that little ticky box without bothering to click the tos link first ?
average adult reading speed ( 250 - 280 words per minute ) , suggests pp , selecting the ‘ quick join ’ clickwrap .
implications are revealed as 98 % missed namedrop tos ‘ gotcha clauses ’ about data sharing with the nsa and employers , and about providing a first - born child as payment for sns access .
” the other said that participants agreed to sign over their firstborn , rumpelstiltskin - style : “ in 37 pages posted : 2 apr 2016 last revised : 18 aug 2018 date written : june 1 , 2018 abstract this paper addresses ‘ the biggest lie on the internet ’ with an empirical investigation of privacy policy ( pp and tos ) policy reading behavior .
a regression analysis identifies information overload as a significant negative predictor of reading pp 30 seconds longer and tos 90 seconds longer .
for those that did n’t select the clickwrap , average reading time of 51 seconds .
the privacy policy and terms of service for this fictitious site were modeled on existing documents on another social network ( linkedin ) , and checked in at roughly 8000 and 4000 words respectively .
but this fake site ’s policies included a few extra clauses that should have raised eyebrows .