Article updated on January 7, 2025 by Byothe
I don't know if you saw it go by this news about a english public wifi who had put in its terms of use that if you connected, you were liable for "community services" (ie. cleaning public toilets, picking up rubbish, etc.)... 22 Britons fell for it! This hoax aimed to raise awareness among Internet users about the importance of terms of use!
Despite everything, and this will come as no surprise, a very small minority of people take the time to read the terms of use of the web services they use. And for good reason, there are often loads of them! But even if you shouldn't imagine that every website is constantly trying to trap you, it is still important to have a vague idea of what you are getting into by using certain services.
And that's where the site TOSDR intervene!
TOSDR (Terms Of Service Didn't Read) is an English-language site that dissects, summarizes, and interprets the terms of use of many sites. The sites are ranked from A (very good) to E (very bad). In addition to this, TOSDR highlights the good and bad points of each site in order to understand the ratings.
Unsurprisingly, most of Google's services are relatively poorly rated between C and D with often opaque conditions. But other sites are doing rather well, such as DuckDuckGo, which gets the highest rating!
Finally, if you want to help the community, you can create an account on edit.tosdr.org to help enrich the site or correct existing information!
TOSDR is not the first initiative of its kind to raise awareness about the terms of use, but the site has the merit of making things much easier and thus allows us to be a little more vigilant! To share massively with the youngest Internet users!!!
