I just had to bring you the following, which is a blog detailing an April Fool’s prank which proved that people were not reading the terms and conditions they were signing up to:
Clearly, no harm has been done on this particular occasion, but what does this experiment tell us?
Are we too trusting of people?
Are we too busy to read what we are committing too?
Are we so desperate to get these products that we will sign ANYTHING?
Do we believe that clicking in the ‘Accept’ box is less binding than actually signing (it’s not!)?
OR– do we simply know that if we do read it, it will all be gobbledegook anyway?
Of course, if nobody ever reads on-line terms and conditions for IT products, then this could have been proved by replacing the existing wording with what a more honest statement – ‘You have virtually no rights, and we have no liability!’
Check out my earlier article: “Do Terms and Conditions Really Matter if No-one Ever Reads Them?” for a more serious discussion of this topic.