Sunday, October 23, 2005

I AGREE

I was registering online yesterday for my 401K plan, when there popped up this document of about 5 pages asking for my compliance with their privacy statements. I was given an option of either to "Accept" or "Not Accept" .Hmmm...time to start thinking "Do I accept or not accept?". Well..ahem, actually, I didn't have a choice, I clicked "I Accept". Tell me, frankly, have you ever read any of these documents where you mostly "Agree" to whatever they write. I think it would be apt to have buttons saying " I read it and Agree" , " I didnot read it but hey! I trust you" ," I read it and disagree" , " I dont have the time and I dont care" ,"I cannot read more than one page", " I didnot read it but still Agree" .
I dont know how these guys come up with such huge documents . For example, lets assume it is an airline , the guy preparing the compliance doc goes,"Hey, Bob!! What happens if the flight gets cancelled at the last moment? Do we give the money back to the passenger?"
Bob - "Nah!! Ofcourse not ! Just add it in the compliance doc.They all agree to it anyway".
Or if Bob had been working in some software firm,it would have been" Just add the statement that we have the right to send them updates and hog their memory ".
For me , my perusal of such documents goes like this,"first line....blah,blah...last line"
I accept or Agree depending on the first and last line. No..who am I fooling? I always AGREE.
Hey! I want to install the software now !! Its a no brainer. We always AGREE.
Next time, when you read such a document, think about it guys!!. We have a choice to DISAGREE as well..

3 comments:

Suresh Sankaralingam said...

I agree...

bumblebee said...

No doubt, I was wondering the same. Do people pay attention to all the mumbo-jumbo.

To my credit I always review the first 2 paragraphs. But now I believe that the software makers figured that out early on, they only load the things we would diagree with in the third para and then through the rest of the document.

BrainWaves said...

Do you think we really have a choice?

Press OK to AGREE.

Dont look for NOT-OK, I am typing this from Windows computer