If you have some free time and would like to be amused — or angered — take a look at your favorite social media website’s Terms of Service page. My favorite is LinkedIn, which states under the Data Controllers section, “If you have any concern about providing information to us or having such information displayed on the LinkedIn services or otherwise used in any manner permitted in this Privacy Policy and the User Agreement, you should not become a member of LinkedIn or visit our website. If you have already registered, you should close your account.” That’s right, LinkedIn recommends that you don’t sign up or close your existing account if you care about your privacy.
Facebook, Google, Netflix — you name it, they have entertaining ToS, to say the least. If you’re like most people, your tendency is to just click to accept the ToS without actually reading it. This can have an adverse effect when you’re dealing with clients’ confidential information and are bound by privilege. While I’m not an attorney, it seems to me that by disclosing information to third-party sites containing unfavorable disclaimers in their ToS with regard to their privacy policy, that privilege might very well be affected.
