• Ars Tehcnica, Thursday, October 9, 2008 11:45 AM

Odds are you've agreed to at least one online privacy policy in the last month. How else to gain access to social networks, photo sites or even Fandango.com? But when was the last time you read one? Probably never. Who's got the time? Well, according to a new study, no one--least of all the American work force.

According to Aleecia McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor of Carnegie Mellon University, if Americans took the time to read just one online privacy policy a year, it would take an average of 10 minutes per policy and cost $365 billion in lost leisure and productivity time. They also discovered that the mean length of privacy policies from the web's most popular sites was 2,514 words, and one policy went as high as 7,669 words, suggesting that no one really expects anyone to read these things in the first place.

If Americans were to truly take the time to learn what is being done with their personal information, it would take anywhere from 16 to 444 hours per person per year, with most Americans needing a full 200 hours to get through everything. The authors estimate the coast at nearly $3,000 per person per year--or $365 billion for the entire country.

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