More than 90% of Russians do not read user agreements on the Internet

Russian Internet users do not finish reading user agreements on sites in 81% of cases, a study by information security company ESET showed.

13% of respondents said that they completely ignore the submitted contracts and agree with them without looking. At the same time, almost half of Russians (49%) either vaguely imagine the functions of user agreements on the Internet, or have no idea about them. The vast majority (92%) do not care if data about them is transferred to third parties: they do not try to leave the site or application, in the user agreement of which such a function is indicated.

Negligent attitude to user agreements can be fraught with consequences, Kirill Podgorny, Director of Marketing at ESET, warned. According to him, contracts sometimes contain exotic or impossible conditions.

“A good example is the experiment of the British wireless Internet operator Purple, which introduced the clause “I undertake to go to voluntary work to clean public toilets” in the agreement. Of the 22,000 users who agreed to the terms of service, only one noticed this item and filed a complaint with the provider,” the expert said.

However, far more common are not humorous conditions, but potentially dangerous ones. Often, a condition on automatic consent to the processing of personal data is illegally added to user agreements, said Lyudmila Kurovskaya, head of the Center for Legal Assistance to Citizens in the Digital Environment.

“When citizens transfer their data without understanding the purpose of their processing, automatically tick the boxes on sites and provide redundant information about themselves, this can create conditions for the leakage of their personal data,” she said.

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

The fruit of ignorance: 90% of Russians do not read user agreements