The long texts that detail the terms and conditions of the service, and that are present when accessing a website or application, could have their days numbered. According to the Washington Post, the United States is proposing a new law that will force portals to offer a summary of the data and information they collect from the navigator to make them “easier to understand”.
The objective of this modification in the terms and conditions of the service is to prevent users from accepting the conditions without reading them. In fact, and according to a Deloitte study published in Business Insider, 91% of Internet users do not read these terms. The problem is that in many platforms abuse their terms by taking into account that nobody reads them. These include hidden conditions in paragraphs with irrelevant and too technical text, which in many cases are not necessary for navigation, as stated by Lori Trahan, one of the representatives of this bill promoted by a group of United States legislators.
“Users shouldn't have to go through legal jargon pages in a website's terms and conditions of service to learn how their data will be used.” Requiring companies to provide an easy-to-understand summary of their terms needs to be mandatory and should have been done a long time ago.”
Lori Trahan, MP and TLDR Bill Representative.
The data that must be included in the summary of the terms and conditions
Source: Unsplash. The bill, baptized as “ TLDR Law ” (Too Long, Didn't Read, for its acronym in English), has two important points. In the first place, it will force the websites and applications to show a summary of the different personal data they collect from the user. This includes precise location, gender, age, religion, information related to your health, etc. Second, platforms will also need to be more transparent and disclose in these terms and conditions of service if they have recently suffered a data breach.
Now, which portals will have to comply with this new law? It will be the web pages and commercial applications that must compulsorily offer a summary of the terms and conditions of the service with the data requested from the user. Although according to the aforementioned media, small companies will be exempt. On the other hand, it will be the Federal Trade Commission of the United States that will supervise the correct application of these terms and will have the power to fine those platforms that fail to comply with the new conditions.
The TLDR law, which still needs to be approved by the United States Congress, could also serve as an example for similar legislation in the European Union.
