20 Hours a Month Reading Privacy Policies

Barence sends word of research out of Carnegie Mellon University calling for changes in the way Web sites present privacy policies. The researchers, one of whom is an EFF board member, calculated how long it would take the average user to read through the privacy policies of the sites visited in a year. The answer: 200 hours, at a hypothetical cost to the US economy of $365 billion, more than half the financial bailout package. Every year. The researchers propose that, if the industry can't make privacy policies easier to read or skim, then federal intervention may be needed. This resulted in the predictable cry of outrage from online executives. Here's the study (PDF).

No big deal.

[Mister Whirly]

200 hours? big deal.
Average amount of hours wasted reading Slashdot at work in a year : 5,000,000

Re:fp

[ozphx]

Short, sweet and to the point. Fine use of rhetoricals and emphasis on the punchline. This well balanced piece is let down by its brevity and typos, I can't help but feel that Coward rushed this work.

Worth your time. Three and a half stars.

What about television

[iteyoidar]

I would imagine every American loses like, a bujillion hours a month watching TV. That probably costs a lot too.

Interesting

[YourExperiment]

Sounds like an interesting report, but I can't spare the time to read it.

Re:No big deal.

[aurb]

It's a good thing we don't read the articles. The number could be much much bigger...

This is a very BIG deal!

[tuxgeek]

So, if our time, 200 hrs, is worth $350 billion
And we spend 5,000,000 hrs / year reading slashdot
That means our wasted hours reading slashdot is worth $8,750,000,000,000,000.00

Good God man! If we slashdotters collude on this we can buy the whole planet and kick everyone else off it, or at least charge them rent.

-----

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups

Re:They need another study

[corsec67]

Not even congress reads the laws.

New monetary comparison value?

[cabjf]

So we're going to measure the cost of things in FBP's now?

Re:No big deal.

[alexhs]

By my own calculations using your helpful data, it means a slashdotter in average wastes each work hour 2500 times...

Using relativity formulae, I guess we would come close to the speed of light...

Re:No big deal.

[MadCow42]

Actually, the average for Slashdot editors appears to be slightly lower than the general populace... it's the only explanation I can see. :)

MadCow.

Re:This is a very BIG deal!

[digitig]

So, if our time, 200 hrs, is worth $350 billion

Where do I apply for this $1.75 billion an hour job, reading privacy agreements?

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair assessment. Great turnaround time.

Would troll again AAAAAAAAAAAAA++++++++++++++++