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Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?
I received communications about updated privacy policies and terms of service from Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal today (in that order, chronologically.) Was there a triggering event that caused them all to update at the same time?
- kingkongjaffa 3y agoProject idea: host version controlled TOS copies from companies to see what changes each time.
- klntsky 3y agoLet's do this? Anyone can hit my username at gmail or telegram
- slater 3y agoThis exists already, though the URL escapes me
- thephyber 3y agoVisualPing already does this: https://visualping.io/blog/how-to-monitor-changes-in-terms-and-conditions https://visualping.io/blog/how-to-monitor-changes-in-terms-a... Docacracy did it a decade ago, but closed shop. The problem isn’t the tech — it’s coming up with a business model that pays for the system and upkeep. As much as people give lip service about privacy, they sure don’t throw money at lobbying efforts that protect their rights in those areas.
- jupp0r 3y agoYou can build this with what Github offers for free to open source projects.
- flamey 3y agoGitHub offers doesn't pay for motivation to do the upkeep.
- prepend 3y agoBut it reduces the cost of upkeep so now we need less motivation.
- 1-6 3y agoI like where this discussion is headed. Scrape the ToS and keep a record of that. Are ToS's copywrited?
- raffraffraff 3y agoThe problem is that these documents aren't served from standardized or predictable URLs across every service provider or regulatory body. I work with a firm who charge heaps of money to provide large companies with publicly available documents. Why do they pay? Because finding the latest copy of 25 different legal docs is a pain in the ass because the entire internet is a broken mess of 404s, over a long enough timeline.
- pwdisswordfishc 3y agoYes, at some point someone has probably written a copy.
- withinboredom 3y agoI thought contracts can’t be copyrighted? There is too much similarity between them for it to make any sense.
- MatthiasPortzel 3y agoShow HN from 10 days ago. => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37064152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37064152 TOS Notify
- chrisjj 3y ago+1 for www.tosnotify.com .
- maxbond 3y agoThis is related but not identical https://tosdr.org/ https://tosdr.org/
- nanidin 3y agoThe fun thing with ToS is that you know every large company with a ToS (or EULA for that matter) has analytics and knows exactly how long you read that ToS (if you did at all), and is smart enough to know objectively if you read it or did not read it.
- microtonal 3y agoThe good thing is that if you relinquish more personal data by accepting the changed ToS, it is not valid or legal in the EU, since the GDPR requires you to ask consent explicitly, unambiguously, and and in simple terms, and per use case (so, not buried in a ToS). Moreover, you should have the option to deny consent per use of personal data. I wonder if they are serving different ToS in the EU (haven't received anything from Microsoft yet).
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoWell, perhaps. For a little while, (and I should resume this behavior) I would capture TOS and save them away to read at leisure. Because what happens, especially with fiddly mobile apps, is that you're granted a single glimpse at the bona fide link to TOS/EULA, and never again will you find how you got there. (Sometimes the link fails right off the bat, giving you zero opportunity to read through the terms!) So I would take advantage of that and save it, by any means necessary: screen scrape, copy-paste, print-as-PDF, take photo of screen with second device, whatever it took, because they could make it difficult! But then I would usually end up with a copy of the contract that I could later call up and check on. So, your suggestion that analytics can determine my dwell time on the document when it's presented to me, that's not going to be indicative of how much time I really spent reading it after copying and saving it. I've found that this is a good practice, and not for the reason you're thinking of. I've found that I'm extraordinarily bad at reading legal documents like this (including my lease, employment contract, benefits and insurance docs, you name it) because even if I think I understand, I didn't get it, and it's pointless anyway because negotiating the wording is not on the table. But it's a good practice to save these, because of this: there are often instructions included about how to resolve disputes and claims against the company. These instructions usually follow a strict procedure and they have rules about what you can do. They also have contact info, and again, you will never ever find this contact info anywhere else ever again if you don't save the EULA at first opportunity. They will tell you what kind of arbitration or court proceedings are acceptable, they will tell you the complaints procedure from start to end, time frames, and what to expect at each point. This info is gold, and it's not going to be available when you come to have a dispute, and you're not even going to be aware of the procedure at that point, and so you will automatically be disqualified and lose any dispute because you didn't follow procedure. Have fun!
- firecall 3y agoIf the T&Cs are at a public URL, then an alternative way is to self host changedetection.io and monitor for changes. I run it to see changes to my competitors websites. Well that’s the idea - I don’t actually monitor it LOL. I just have it running in Docker.
- nanidin 3y agoThis is a great idea, but I'm also interested in the why behind those changes.
- Solvency 3y agoThis was literally posted on HN like a few days ago as a fully completed project.
- xwowsersx 3y agoThere was this Show HN recently for a tool that automatically notifies you when terms change. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37064152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37064152
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- j5155 3y agoTailscale does this! https://github.com/tailscale/terms-and-conditions https://github.com/tailscale/terms-and-conditions Because “our legal team advised us not to summarize changes”, so now you can just view diffs!
- janalsncm 3y agoThis already exists. Took me forever to find though. https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive
- omneity 3y agoYou can use https://monitoro.co https://monitoro.co to monitor and extract TOS, and send the changes to a webhook that does whatever you want with the data :) Disclaimer, I work on Monitoro.
- maxloh 3y agoMaybe just use Way back Machine?
- shireboy 3y agoThen use LLM and manual review to summarize down to laymen’s terms
- Aachen 3y agoIt's a requirement that contracts you enter into are provided to you in a way that you can store them on a durable medium. Maybe it's a good idea to make use of that and store your copy, if you want to know what changed
- megahz 3y agoI believe due to Digital Services Act: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/safer-online https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/safer-onli...
- mdwalters 3y agoWhat parts of the ToS did they modify/add?
- kingkongjaffa 3y agoQuick someone put the ToS in a git repo so we can incrementally see the diffs on each update and comment on its impacts. Is this possible?
- upon_drumhead 3y agoBe the change you wish to see in the world.
- mdwalters 3y agoI would do this, but I am very unsure on the legality of this.
- thephyber 3y agoPayPal already has an “Updates” page for their legal agreements. It describes which agreement is updated when and when that change takes effect. I also received the PayPal email notification, but when clicking through the link the only legal agreement change this month was a week ago and was related to how much of your user data is available to a user visiting your PayPal.me page. Highly unlikely this is a coordinated change with Meta and MSFT.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoURLs please.
- nanidin 3y agoMicrosoft - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement/upcoming.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement/upcoming.a... Meta ToS - https://www.meta.com/legal/supplemental-terms-of-service-updated/ https://www.meta.com/legal/supplemental-terms-of-service-upd... Meta Privacy Policy - https://www.meta.com/legal/privacy-policy-updated/ https://www.meta.com/legal/privacy-policy-updated/ PayPal - https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/upcoming-policies-full https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/upcoming-policies-full The common denominator in the communication copy seems to be related to accounts belonging to minors. Microsoft mentions "If you are a parent or guardian, you are responsible for your child’s or teenager’s use of Microsoft products and services, including purchases", Meta's highlights revolve around "Parent-managed accounts", and PayPal did not provide anything meaningful about changes in the email.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- djvdorp 3y agoThis WhatsApp one might be related too, just popped up for me. I know it's Meta nowadays: https://faq.whatsapp.com/781249240131848/ https://faq.whatsapp.com/781249240131848/
- roey2009 3y agoIf we scrape the tos to a git repo, and update it, we can diff it to a telegram bot, then pipeline to openai to summarize.
- bushbaba 3y agoMaybe EU dma related?
- dudeinjapan 3y ago[flagged]
- nanidin 3y agoI was more interested if some law or regulation recently came into effect
- oezi 3y agoSince I have not gotten any emails from these services, it would be good if you share your present jurisdiction.
- nanidin 3y agoUSA
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoUSA here too, got nothing from nobody, so closing this ticket
- ipqk 3y agoCompanies may spread out their emails over days. Right now Google is sending out emails about their new Gmail inactive account policy. A lot of people use my domain name as their email address for some reason. I've gotten 17 emails so far, the first one dated July 20th, the last one yesterday August 18th. Almost a MONTH, and all the destination email addresses are their own! it may even be longer since they're all in my trash and it auto-deletes after a month.
- Lord_Zero 3y agoWhat is your domain name?
- ipaddr 3y agoIt's Friday the best time to release news people will forget about
- KingLancelot 3y agoSnapchat did too.
- dtjohnnymonkey 3y agoThere was a recent ruling on EU-US Data Privacy regulations https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_3721 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...
- niemandhier 3y agoThat seems to be a decision by the commission, not the the high court. These two bodies tend to counter each other a lot, I would expect to have a court ruling in 2 years that cancels this decision.
- toyg 3y agoOn this particular subject, it's basically realpolitik. Court: "US law is incompatible with ours" Executive: "Yeah but I'm sure we can all get along <wink wink>..."
- jacooper 3y agoAnd then shrems III happens because it's clearly illegal. https://noyb.eu/en/23-years-illegal-data-transfers-due-inactive-dpas-and-new-eu-us-deals https://noyb.eu/en/23-years-illegal-data-transfers-due-inact...
- lnxg33k1 3y ago[flagged]
- venv 3y agoWhatsapp's in-app notification regarding the TOS change references an EU ruling, so this is the likely cause.
- acumenical 3y agoWhat does this mean for customers of Meta, Microsoft, and PayPal? Are we consenting to having our data more carefully handled?
- riedel 3y ago
- septillianator 3y agowhen is there going to be an AI that specializes in summarizing terms and conditions
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- salad-tycoon 3y agoIf you ask chatgpt to summarize its TOS would that also count as legal and TOS?
- kramerger 3y agoI tried to read some of them to see what has changed. I really tried... If any lawyers from the future are reading this: It was impossible for me to see what I was agreeing to. Furthermore, I was not given a chance to not agree with these (unknown) changes.
- Zetice 3y agoThe answer to this is to not agree to it (your “chance” is to stop using the service).
- throwaway290 3y agoExactly. And it's actually quite easy for some of these products (except maybe for PayPal if you don't have a bank account).
- deely3 3y agoYeah, just change place of work everytime when company asks you to do somwthing with any Microsoft product. Is this your solution?
- ssl232 3y agoAre the terms for Microsoft business customers different to those for end users, with regards to privacy and tracking? Can my ssl232@mycompany.com email provided by Office365 get tracked around the internet just the same as ssl232@gmail.com?
- throwaway290 3y agoIt probably is tracked but you don't care unless you are using company provided accounts/infra to do personal stuff and then that's your actual problem
- throwaway290 3y agoIf this is your work account then switching is down to your employer and they probably have a legal dept to understand all ToS anyway. But any ToS change shouldn't affect you much because you shouldn't be using it for personal stuff.
- jdthedisciple 3y agoIllumi... No yea probably just some US EU Data regulations thing.
- z3t4 3y agoI guess it's like a canary bird, they where not allow to publish the new updates.
- bandergirl 3y agoProject idea: a Gmail filter that automatically burns all this junk mail every time it rolls into my inbox. Nobody reads this stuff except journalists and lawyers, yet I cannot unsubscribe.
- replete 3y agoSomeone might try creating a prompt for claude 100k asking what the difference is..
- sschueller 3y agoSwitzerland's new data protection law comes into effect on September 1st. Not sure it would require everyone in the world to get a new ToS unless one ToS is for the whole world.
- Geee 3y agoI got one from Microsoft. It has a summary of changes: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement/upcoming-updates https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement/upcoming-u...
- cj 3y agoWe had to change our privacy policy at work this week. Simple reason was the EU/US Privacy Shield program came back into effect (to comply with GDPR), but it required slight changes to privacy policies (renaming Privacy Shield to something slightly different). Any company participating in privacy shield will need to update their privacy policy if they haven't already.
- chrisjj 3y agoEnd of working week!
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoI think TOS by law should be versioned and that the diffs should be explicitly shown.
- Joe_Boogz 3y agoHost the TOS on git and allow us to view it, easy