Re: When is "phone home" ok, if ever?

I agree that Terms of Service written in prose are very likely to be
blindly accepted without being read, giving users little understanding of
how an app handles privacy, protects data, etc.

Is there such a thing as a semantic version of ToS? I'm not aware of any,
but perhaps there's an opportunity here to define "consent claims"; a
semantic representation of ToS that an app can use to explain, and which
users could selectively accept or reject in the best case.

Maybe this is too ambitious for now.

Best,
Filip


On Tue, May 6, 2025 at 4:27 PM David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:

> On Tue, May 6, 2025 at 4:09 AM, carsten.stoecker@spherity.com wrote:
> > . . .
> >   * Terms of use should define purpose, context, and data retention
> >     obligations.____
>
> Slightly off topic, but . . .
>
> "Terms of use" do not give users any real choice in the matter.  Users
> are conditioned to not read them because: they are are presented with so
> many of them; user interfaces make it easiest just to "Agree" without
> looking at them; they are lengthy (e.g., the indeed.com terms of use are
> a whopping 100 pages!!!); they are written in legalese; THEY OFTEN HAVE
> SECTIONS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS TO MAKE THEM HARDER TO READ; and
> there is no way for the user to negotiate them.  They are a plague that
> unfairly advantages large corporations who can hire teams of lawyers to
> write them in their favor, knowing that users do not have the means or
> expertise to negotiate them.
>
> In short, I'm wary of the relying on "terms of use" for fairly
> protecting users' rights.
>
> David Booth
>
>