A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
I remember about thirty years ago I bought some new software. I don’t remember the program, how much I paid for it or whether I liked it. What I do remember is opening the box and taking out a shrink wrapped disk. After opening the disk, I took out the End User License Agreement (EULA). The opening paragraph read something similar to this: “By opening the package, you agree to our Terms of Service.” These companies were sneaky back then and they are still furtive today.
What got me to reminiscing about this was the EULA for Toolwiz Time Freeze, a sandbox program software that I recently updated. It doesn’t get much simpler. The terms of service were easy to read and understand. Compare this with many other EULAs of thirty or forty thousand words that you cannot understand without consulting a dictionary.
I’m not going to go into a long diatribe about the evil things some EULA agreements do. Things like saying you agree to never sue the company, post bad reviews on social media, agreeing to future changes, etc. I’m also not going to write about some of the funny EULAs. I’m pretty sure that Apple doesn’t really think anyone will use iTunes to manufacture missiles.
Instead, I’m going to tell you about some EULA services I use. Like most other people, I don’t read all agreements before installing software. You can slap my wrist the next time you see me.
EULAlyzer is a program I’ve used for many years. When you are installing new software, open the program and you will see an option to “scan new license agreement”. A new window will pop up with an icon to drag over the EULA window. The EULA will be imported and you can analyze it. You do this simply by clicking the “analyze” button. Eulalyzer then reviews the license for keywords such as tracking, advertising, third‑party, data collection, etc.
I’ve been getting e-mails from Paranoid Paul for more years than I can remember. Paranoid Paul is a free service that allows you to track changes made to online documents that affect your privacy or your personal information. This includes Privacy Policies, Terms and Conditions or User Agreements. I haven’t actually been on the website for most of those many years I mentioned earlier. To use the service, you must submit an e-mail address. Then you pick which documents you are interested in following. Whenever there is a change, you will receive an e‑mail with a brief synopsis of what is new. The service is free.
Occasionally, I find other programs or websites that claim to do the same thing, but I have found none of them to be as useful or easy to use. Life would be so much easier if privacy policies were as clean and concise as the one on my personal website.
Thanks for reading.