Did you know that your cell phone End User License Agreement (EULA) allows your service provider to rummage through your phone anytime they wish? Look into it; it’s there. Same with Windows 10’s EULA; Microsoft reserves the right to rummage through any and all of your files when ever they wish — it’s not worded quite that way with Microsoft, but that’s what it amounts to. I’m not going to quote the sections here… do your own research. The justification is that this gives them better data for improving the product, for finding out how people are using the software and so on.
“Man is a rationalizing animal, not a rational one” — Robert Heinlein
This is called Telemetry under Windows. I’d call it Invasion of Privacy and highly actionable, except that we all agreed to it, when we first switched on Windows and clicked on the “I Agree” hocus-pocus.
Except that some of us didn’t agree — not really. I bought Windows 7, then upgraded to Windows 10. Windows 7 did not have such an agreement, and Windows 10 did, but they didn’t require me to read the agreement, except that “by clicking on next” I claimed that I had, except that… and so on. It’s a legal tangle that can’t be won by shallow pockets.
What that means, really, is that no one wins. In the long run even the corporations will lose on that deal.
The problem with the Hidden Agreements is that we don’t know what’s in them. They are long, long, incredibly long documents, designed to wear down the typical reader before he finds the nasty parts. They are also worded in such a way that the “nasty parts” don’t seem bad. That’s one of the problems with modern law; obfuscation is the norm.
Me, I think the world would be better off if two rules were always followed:
- If you can’t say it in plain words and have it still sound like a decent thing to do, don’t do it
- If it’s a product of a service you wouldn’t want your spouse or children using, then don’t market it.
How hard is all that? Really?