Read it and sleep! Online terms and conditions are now so long and complicated it would take Brits over two days to get through the privacy policies of the websites they visit in a month, according to research by cybersecurity company, NordVPN.
The study looked at the most popular 20 websites in 19 countries to see how long it would take people to read their privacy policies, which reveal key details of the data companies store on them.
Social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, owned by Meta, had the biggest UK policies, with both clocking in at 19,434 words – equivalent to an average reading time of 82 minutes. They were followed by online auction site, eBay (17,126 words) and property portal, Rightmove (16,186 words).
X, previously known as Twitter, was far shorter at 4,175 words, taking around 17 minutes to read. The briefest out of the top 20 was the official UK government website gov.uk, running to 1,447 words, or just six minutes of reading.
The average privacy policy in the UK consists of 7,774 words and takes 33 minutes to read. With Brits typically visiting 96 different websites during a month, this means they would need to spend about 52 hours to go through all the Ts and Cs. However, one in three UK web users admit that when using an app or website they spend no time reading its terms of use.
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