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editorial

Nobody reads fine print, so as a public service in 2018 here is a non-exhaustive compendium of what you agree to when you accept the terms of service of Facebook, Google, Amazon or virtually any other internet or social-networking company.

Depending on the company, you’re giving permission for it to track your physical movements, your appointments and your meetings. If it’s a social-media app, you’re providing it with a list of your friends and relatives – and a good deal more, such as a record of your internet searches. Note that your half-finished, deleted and unsent messages may continue to exist for a while on a server somewhere. You may well have ceded control of your microphone or camera.

Accepting an app’s request to access your phone’s contacts can also provide it with unfettered access to your text messages and the time, duration, location and number for every incoming and outgoing call.

A single user’s data can run into the millions of pages, via which Big Tech can and does derive patterns and draw inferences about politics, religion, consumption habits and tastes.

Oh, and you’re definitely allowing Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and hundreds of others to sell aspects of this information. If they are swallowed by a bigger company, that data will, in all likelihood, transfer to the buyer. Often you accept that it could get hacked, stolen or misused along the way.

The central problem is default settings: To maintain privacy, one must opt in. This is exactly backwards, and it is not innocent. Companies shift responsibility to users while reserving the power to limit their privacy choices. It is the industry standard and central to many business models.

Would we blithely accept this mix of intrusion and lack of control if a government were demanding it? Not a chance.

The simplest summary of the modern terms-of-service agreement is contained in a 1983 soft-rock classic by The Police that is often mistaken for a love song (it’s about stalking).

“Every breath you take/Every move you make/Every bond you break/Every step you take/I’ll be watching you.”

Click here if you agree.

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