IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 82
be input and examined. The tool provides statistics on
character count, syllable count, word count, sentence
count, characters per word, syllables per word, and
words per sentence, in addition to the reading level
score [50].
The privacy policies of Facebook, Google, LinkedIn,
and Twitter were all analyzed using this measure, with
every statement having a reading level of above eighth
grade. The resulting readings levels of each privacy poli-
cy after using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readabili-
ty Formula are 12.8 for Twitter, 11.9 for Facebook, 11.3
for LinkedIn, and 13.5 for Google. These levels corre-
spond with the school grade levels (e.g., 9-12 are high
school reading levels). The higher the number the more
difficult it is for the individual to comprehend. For the
majority of users to comprehend these statements the
levels would have to be at 8 or lower. This means that
over half the population of users for these platforms
cannot understand what they are agreeing to when they
sign up for an account since these platforms allow
accounts to be created at as early as 13 years old.
Recommendations
Concerns for online privacy have been building for years
as more people have transferred their lives into the digi-
Over half the population of users for
these platforms cannot understand
what they are agreeing to when they
sign up for an account.
tal world. Unfortunately, as concerns about online priva-
cy have continued to increase, the privacy policies of
various web platforms have increasingly given users less
privacy. This does not happen in a bubble; there are var-
ious forces that influence both sides of the equation. On
the side of the Internet companies is the necessity to
generate increasing revenues so that they can continue
to pay their operating expenses and earn maximum
possible profit. Most Internet companies offer a service
to users free of monetary cost, but request information
from the consumer in return. This information can allow
advertisers to easily target users to display the adver-
tisements that would be most relevant to them.
Currently the Internet is the fastest growing market
for advertising [21]. When more information is collected
from the consumer, advertisers can build more in-depth
82
profiles and target advertisements more effectively.
Over time, privacy agreements have steadily eroded to
allow for more information collection.
Privacy Policy Displays
Users, who have been using various platforms with an
expectation of privacy, have started to become aware of
the erosion of online privacy [41]. However, most of the
time this increased awareness happens after a user
already has an account with a particular service. This cir-
cumstance can occur for a few reasons: the user does
not read the privacy policy, the user reads the statement
but does not understand it, or the statement changes
after the user already has an account. Many online ser-
vices, including the ones included in this analysis, only
place a link to their privacy policy next to the button (see
Figure 1) that allows users to submit their information for
account creation. Google has possibly the most hidden
privacy policy since their search function does not
require the user to sign up and does not state that the
user is agreeing to terms and conditions each time a
search is conducted. However, the privacy policy still
applies to the search service. This causes many users to
skip over looking at a privacy policy, even though they
are agreeing to its terms. A small-scale study found that
out of a sample of over 200 users, only 7 for a particular
site clicked the privacy policy before hitting the submit
button [37]. While this was barely a drop in the bucket
compared to the web traffic that a platform like Google
or Facebook receives, it is still a small indication that pri-
vacy policies may not be doing their job of informing
users. Currently signing up for these services is so easy
that the consumer does not have the time to consider
the possible repercussions [24].
A possible change that could allow users to at least
be aware of the lengthy privacy policies is place the pri-
vacy policy within the signup form. Before the user can
click "sign up," require them to scroll through the entire-
ty of the privacy policy. While this cannot force the user
to read the statement, it at least gives the information to
them up front.
Information Technology Literacy of Users
The second potential roadblock is the comprehension
level of the users who do read the privacy policies. As
stated earlier 50% of U.S. adults do not understand text
written at an eighth grade level [35]; however, the priva-
cy policies are typically written at eleventh grade or
higher. Some of the comprehension problem cannot be
blamed solely on the company since there is no getting
around the use of technical terms like cookies and IP
address. Without the computer knowledge to know what
these terms mean sections of the statement might as
well be gibberish.
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
∕
june 2016
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