Subj : 'A bottle of good wine' for free: How an NGO protested against we
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Mon May 13 2024 18:45:05

'A bottle of good wine' for free: How an NGO protested against website 
privacy policy pages using a sneak attack freebie that went viral

Date:
Mon, 13 May 2024 17:31:12 +0000

Description:
Non-profit organization Tax Policy Associates added a line to its privacy 
policy offering a bottle of good wine to the first person to spot it.

FULL STORY
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How often do you read through terms and conditions, EULAs and privacy 
policies? Although we know we should scour the fine print, its something few 
of us ever bother to do, and certainly not fully. 

Non-profit organization Tax Policy Associates wanted to prove how pointless 
these documents are, and so in February 2024 added a line to its privacy 
policy, offering a bottle of good wine to the first person who spotted the 
offer and got in touch. 

After three months of nobody noticing the addition, the reward was finally 
found by someone who chanced upon it after looking at several examples of 
privacy policies online to get an idea of how to create their own. Not the 
first time 

The organization's head, Dan Neidle, shared the story on X and told the BBC 
it was "my childish protest that all businesses have to have a privacy policy 
and no one reads it. Every tiny coffee shop has to have a privacy policy on 
their website, its crazy. Its money thats being wasted." 

In its coverage, which was the most read story on the site, the BBC pointed 
out that any company that holds personal data, including small businesses and 
charities, has to have a privacy policy under the UK's General Data 
Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR). 

This is actually the second time that Tax Policy Associates has made a sneaky 
addition to its privacy policy. The first time it took four months to be 
found. "We did it again to see if people were paying more attention and 
theyre not," Neidle told the BBC. 

The writing in the firm's privacy policy has since been changed following the 
discovery and now says, "We know nobody reads this, because we added in 
February that wed send a bottle of good wine to the first person to contact 
us, and it was only in May that we got a response." 

If you're wondering what counts as a "good" bottle of wine in this instance, 
the answer, according to the BBC, is a Chteau de Sales 2013/14, Pomerol . Our 
ongoing experiment into whether anyone reads website T&Cs continues. We put 
this in our terms back in February. Just got claimed. 
pic.twitter.com/N7k3weTuA9 May 9, 2024 See more More from TechRadar Pro User 
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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/a-bottle-of-good-wine-for-free-how-an-ngo-protes
ted-against-website-privacy-policy-pages-using-a-sneak-attack-freebie-that-wen
t-viral


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