“Terms and conditions contracts are simply too long and complex for any reasonable person to make any real sense of,” the report published on the UK parliament’s website stated.
“As a mechanism for showing that users have provided informed consent, so that organizations can process incredibly personal data, terms and conditions; contracts are simply not fit for the purpose,” the report added.
“Let’s face it, most people click yes to terms and conditions contracts without reading them, because they are often laughably long and written in the kind of legalese you need a law degree from the US to understand,” the committee’s chair Andrew Miller, was quoted as saying in a statement published on the website.
User data is of enormous value to both commercial and governmental online resources in the United Kingdom, the report stated, adding that terms of service contracts are written with a marked bias toward protecting online organizations from legal action by their users, instead of providing coherent and informed user consent.
According to the report, over 1.5 billion people around the world use social media, and participate in platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
