The terms of service is a legal document that protects the company and explains to consumers what the rules are when using the service, says Ray Walsh, data privacy advocate at . That starts with reading the small print. But we can all take steps to thwart 24/7 corporate surveillance. There are few laws or regulations protecting online privacy, so shielding our personal information from prying eyes can seem like an exercise in futility. That "que será será" attitude is understandable. They trusted the organization had their best interests at heart. At first, more than two-thirds of the survey participants claimed they read the agreement and 33 claimed to have read it top to bottom. When the jig was up, they offered up the same old excuses: It took too much time to read through it all. Yet we mostly just shrug our shoulders when asked. The Florida insurer, Squaremouth, offered the prize to the first person who emailed the company. Last year, Georgia high school teacher Donelan Andrews won $10,000 for poring through the terms of the travel insurance policy she purchased for a trip to England. Some companies reward customers who scour the small print. Those who did unwittingly gave NameDrop their firstborn children and agreed to have anything they shared on the service passed on to the National Security Agency. In 2016, two communication professors – Jonathan Obar of York University in Toronto and Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch of the University of Connecticut – asked unsuspecting college students to join nonexistent social network NameDrop and agree to the terms of service. This isn't the first time researchers have used trickery to drive the point home that few people read all the terms of service, privacy policies and other agreements that regularly pop up on their screens. Out of 100 people, 19 clicked through to the terms and conditions page, but only one person read it thoroughly enough to realize they’d be agreeing to grant drones access to the airspace over their home. Using a period tracker app? This is what happens to your personal information
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