When purchasing a product or a service, people tend to be quite selective about a variety of its properties and qualities, including the price, the overall appearance, and even seemingly insignificant details. However, very few people take even a quick look at the end-user license agreement (EULA), not to mention reading the entire document. Although considering a legal agreement closely and paying attention to its every point would be the reasonable and rational thing to do, the amount of information in a EULA and the time that it will take render the process nearly pointless for most buyers (Manwaring, 2017). I skimmed a Eula only recently when purchasing the Norton security antivirus.
The agreement provided for the product in question has been generally well-crafted, yet some of its clauses appear to be somewhat vague. For instance, very little attention has been paid to the concept of Safe Search, which constitutes an important part of the Norton product. Described broadly as the ability of the user to browse the Internet and search for information on it, the notion of Safe Search could use further clarification. Specifically, it could be understood both as conducting the unlimited search or as visiting specific sites. Additionally, the clause of privacy and data protection, particularly, the terms associated with the situations in which the company can disclose the customer’s data to a third party (for instance, during a legal investigation), have not been addressed (“Norton license agreement,” n.d.). The current clause could imply that the company cannot disclose any data to anyone or that it has the right to decide when to disclose customers’ browsing data to the authorities. The described interpretations may favor the company in case of the buyer users the services for malicious intents. In turn, for a consumer, the specified terms guarantee an extent of flexibility needed in case a security or data management issue occurs when using the software.
References
Manwaring, K. (2017). Emerging information technologies: challenges for consumers.Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal, 17(2), 265-289.
Norton license agreement. (n.d.).