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I'd really love to see an app which monitors changes in terms and conditions for different apps and services so that I am notified whenever something changes.

by chirau 10y ago

switch007 10y ago
https://www.docracy.com/tos/changes https://www.docracy.com/tos/changes There's an RSS feed for all changes, haven't looked to see if there's per-site feeds.
bballer 10y ago
Wouldn't it be pretty easy to create a git repo that you seed with the a bunch of ToS, have a cron fetch them everyday or so, run `git diff` to see if there are changes, push them, tag a new release and boom anyone subscribed will be notified.
- philippnagel 10y ago
  Sounds good. Another way could be to feed the ToS URL into a visual web scraper (e.g https://github.com/scrapinghub/portia https://github.com/scrapinghub/portia, scrape, then compare and notify via email.
  - bballer 10y ago
    Yeah but then you need infrastructure to send all the emails etc. Hooking into git would allow complete version history diffs, emails, a platform to discuss the changes on and so on. Idea was to just keep it as light as possible while off loading all the heavy lifting.
k_sze 10y ago
And the app would notify you about changes of its own T&C. Oh so meta.
x1798DE 10y ago
Apparently the EFF has a site that does that: https://tosback.org/ https://tosback.org/ There seems to be a related browser extension (which is recommended elsewhere in this thread by egjerlow), https://tosdr.org https://tosdr.org, but I'm not quite sure if it will tell you when something has changed.
nihonde 10y ago
Talk about perverse side-effects: the existence of such a tool would actually make those awful one-sided "contracts" more enforceable, since the vendor would have a reasonable presumption that you were actually aware of the changes. I feel like you're better off not knowing, so that you can claim that there was no notice or assent given.
INTPenis 10y ago
The way I'm already being notified by various services of changes in their terms I'd venture a guess that they're required by law to notify their users.

I'd really love to see an app which monitors changes in terms and conditions for different apps and services so that I am notified whenever something changes.

by chirau 10y ago

I'd really love to see an app which monitors changes in terms and conditions for different apps and services so that I am notified whenever something changes.

switch007 10y ago

https://www.docracy.com/tos/changes https://www.docracy.com/tos/changes There's an RSS feed for all changes, haven't looked to see if there's per-site feeds.

bballer 10y ago

Wouldn't it be pretty easy to create a git repo that you seed with the a bunch of ToS, have a cron fetch them everyday or so, run `git diff` to see if there are changes, push them, tag a new release and boom anyone subscribed will be notified.

philippnagel 10y ago
Sounds good. Another way could be to feed the ToS URL into a visual web scraper (e.g https://github.com/scrapinghub/portia https://github.com/scrapinghub/portia, scrape, then compare and notify via email.
- bballer 10y ago
  Yeah but then you need infrastructure to send all the emails etc. Hooking into git would allow complete version history diffs, emails, a platform to discuss the changes on and so on. Idea was to just keep it as light as possible while off loading all the heavy lifting.

k_sze 10y ago

And the app would notify you about changes of its own T&C. Oh so meta.

x1798DE 10y ago

Apparently the EFF has a site that does that: https://tosback.org/ https://tosback.org/ There seems to be a related browser extension (which is recommended elsewhere in this thread by egjerlow), https://tosdr.org https://tosdr.org, but I'm not quite sure if it will tell you when something has changed.

nihonde 10y ago

Talk about perverse side-effects: the existence of such a tool would actually make those awful one-sided "contracts" more enforceable, since the vendor would have a reasonable presumption that you were actually aware of the changes. I feel like you're better off not knowing, so that you can claim that there was no notice or assent given.

INTPenis 10y ago

The way I'm already being notified by various services of changes in their terms I'd venture a guess that they're required by law to notify their users.