Tax think tank sends man wine after he reads privacy policy in full
A website awarded an eagle-eyed user with a free £35 bottle of wine – for being the only person to read the terms and conditions in full.
The free bottle of ‘good wine’ was hidden in the privacy policy of the Tax Policy Associates website as an experiment to test if anyone had read the full policy.
Hidden in the middle of the terms and conditions, a clause had been planted saying that the website would ‘send a bottle of good wine to the first person to read this’.
It took three months for the small print to be spotted and the wine – a £35 bottle of Château de Sales 2013/14, Pomerol – to be claimed.
Dan Neidle, who heads the non-profit organisation, admitted the experiment was a ‘childish protest’ that all businesses are required to have a privacy policy but no one reads it.
The free bottle of ‘good wine’ was hidden in the privacy policy of the Tax Policy Associates website as an experiment to test if anyone had read the full policy (Stock Image)
Hidden in the middle of the terms and conditions, a clause had been planted saying that the website would ‘send a bottle of good wine to the first person to read this’.
Neidle told the BBC: ‘Every tiny coffee shop has to have a privacy policy on their website, it’s crazy. It’s money that’s being wasted.’
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Mr Neidle said: ‘Crazier still is that we’re legally required to have a privacy policy, even though nobody cares or reads it.’
According to the Information Commissioner’s Office, all companies that hold personal data must have a privacy policy – a key requirement under the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR).
Tax Policy Associates played a similar trick two years ago, when it took four months for the clause to be spotted.
Mr Neidle added: ‘We did it again to see if people were paying more attention and they’re not.’
He explained that the sneaky experiment was inspired by the band Van Halen who would ask tour promoters for a bowl of M&Ms with the brown ones removed.
The test was designed to check if tour organisers were paying attention to complicated instructions.
According to the Information Commissioner’s Office, all companies that hold personal data must have a privacy policy (Stock Image)
Other companies have hidden Easter eggs within their small print in a bid to prove how few people actually read them.
On April Fool’s Day in 2010, Game Station, a UK-based games retailer, added an ‘immortal soul clause’ to their terms and conditions.
The clause read: ‘By placing an order via this website on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant us a non-transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul.’
Game Station claimed 88 per cent of their customers had not read the clause, granting them legal ownership of their souls.
A home economics teacher from America once won a $10,000 reward after she closely read the terms and conditions that came with a travel insurance policy she purchased for a trip to England.
Squaremouth, the Florida-based insurance company, had promised the reward as part of their Pays to Read campaign and said: ‘We awarded one customer $10,000 for doing what no one does, but always should’.
In 2017, 22,000 people who signed up to use free public Wi-Fi, inadvertently agreed to complete 1,000 hours of community service including washing toilets and ‘relieving sewer blockages’, according to The Guardian.
Three years earlier, a handful of Londoners gave up their eldest children in exchange for public Wi-Fi access.
In MailChimp’s legal terms, the email marketing company put it simply: ‘We won’t be held liable for any delays or failure in performance of any part of the Service, from any cause beyond our control.
‘This includes, but is not limited to, acts of god, changes to law or regulations, embargoes, war, terrorist acts, riots, fires, earthquakes, nuclear accidents, floods, strikes, power blackouts, volcanic action, unusually severe weather conditions, and acts of hackers or third-party internet service providers.’
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