Alexis Madrigal reports on a study done on the privacy policies that we all mindlessly agree to:

• The median length of the privacy policy of the 75 top websites is ~2,500 words.
• On average people read 250 words a minute.
• The average American is estimated to visit around 1500 websites a month.
• To read the privacy policy of all the websites you visit would require 76, 8-hour work days.
• Across the United States that’s 53.8 billion hours of reading time.
• This puts the opportunity cost of reading privacy policies at $781 billion – more than the GDP of Florida.

To read more details of the analysis, why this is probably an under-estimate, and what this tells us about the way we deal with privacy, click here.

Source: The Atlantic

Via: Marginal Revolution

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