Let’s not miss the opportunity to remember that we need to be, in various ways, more aware web users.
Weekly we deal with disproving a hoax circulating online, and showing how to recognize fake news. Or we reiterate how important it is to protect your data, starting with the choice of secure passwords. Or, again, we urge knowledge, and not demonization, of generative artificial intelligence, which will increasingly be part of our daily lives. And which therefore should not be opposed or feared, but used for the best.
Very good. Yet, the responsibilities do not lie only with web users. Let’s take for example those who want to read the privacy policies in full and carefully. An action that, in hindsight, we should all do.
Well: research by NordVPN tells us that, just to read the privacy policies of the 20 most visited sites in Italy, it would take us about 20 hours.
Let’s look at the data from this study in more detail.
The NordVPN study
NordVPN, with more than 5,000 servers in 60 countries, is the most advanced VPN service provider in the world.
On Monday 23 October, the outcome of the test was published on the official NordVPN blog an interesting research on the reading times of the privacy policies of nineteen countries. We remind you that, in summary, the privacy policy explains to the user how their data will be collected and used.
Let’s discover the results of our country, and compare them to those of the other countries analyzed.
A working week to read a month’s information
Let’s start with a curious and disturbing fact: to accurately read all the privacy policies of the sites visited on average in a month, an Italian would need 46.6 hours.
Which translated means: to take the time we need, we should ask for a week off from work. And it wouldn’t be enough.
Other data: to read the privacy policies of the 20 most visited sites in Italy (more than 141,000 words in total), we should have 9 hours on our hands, almost half an hour per site.
Privacy policies in our country have an average length of 6,938 words. A person reads an average of 238 words per minute, so reading an average length policy would take around 29 minutes.
The simplest policies and the most complicated ones
The longest information is that of the Meta social networks (Facebook and Instagram), with 19,434 words, and would require approximately 82 minutes of reading.
However, it should be considered that length is only one of the parameters of the complexity of a text. Applying the FRES parameters (Flesch Reading Ease Score, a rating system for the complexity of a text) these policies are “fairly difficult” (rating 50). They would still be understandable to a high school student.
X (the former Twitter) has much shorter information (4,175 words) and a readability index substantially identical to that of Facebook and Instagram.
Among the less complex texts, the privacy policies of Google, YouTube and WhatsApp follow closely.
Always following the FRES index, eBay and Libero are the sites with the most complex privacy policies of all, both with values lower than 10. In short, post-doctoral skills would be needed for full understanding. Sites like Mediaset.it are doing better, followed by Corriere.it and Repubblica.it.
The results globally
European countries have more detailed privacy policies than other areas of the world, mainly due to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). For example, eBay indicates that reading its policy would take 15 minutes, but in a GDPR area it would take more than an hour.
Germany holds the record for the most extensive policies, while South Korea has the most concise ones. Reading all the policies of the 96 websites you visit in a month would take 70 hours in Germany and 31 in South Korea.
In English-speaking countries (such as the US, Canada, Australia and the UK), Zoom scored the worst in the FRES readability test (with only a 24.9 score). To read his information, it would take 30 minutes.
In these countries, Netflix received the worst rating on the Coleman-Liau scale (14.98).
The statements
Adrianus Warmenhoven, cyber security expert at NordVPN, commented on the outcome of the research.
Warmenhoven said: “Even though we continue to remind users to read privacy policies, one in three Italians consults no legal information online. Contextualizing this data in a broader framework, however, it is an understandable behavior.
In fact, we should dedicate a quarter of our monthly working hours to read this information on all the sites we visit. With a minimum salary, you could earn around €332 in the same time frame.
On the other hand, reading a privacy policy is just as important as having one. That’s why online companies should do more to create short, easy-to-understand privacy policies. And at the same time, users should choose only trustworthy sites and know what information to look for within these privacy policies.”
NordVPN tips
Finally, NordVPN provides three tips for reading privacy policies quickly and effectively.
- Control what data is collected: This information is usually listed at the beginning of the privacy notices. If a site requests data that doesn’t seem relevant to the service offered, suspicions should increase.
- Search for “alarming” keywords: Try searching the policy document for keywords like “sell” or “assign,” which indicate that your data may be sold to third parties. Also try terms like “partners,” “affiliates,” and “third parties” with whom your data may be shared or sold. Finally, look for words like “may” and “for example,” as these may reveal the site’s true intentions regarding its use of its users’ data (such as “will be used for marketing purposes by sharing with third parties”).
- Visit reputable websites: You can reduce the risk of your information being misused by visiting sites with good reputations. Avoid portals that have a strange or suspicious layout, especially those that don’t even have a privacy policy to show to their users.