Is that Android or iPhone app safe to download? 3 red flags to look out for

If you don’t read an app’s terms of service agreement before you click to accept or agree, you’re not alone. Very few people actually take the time to dive into the text of what an app or website is asking them to agree to, according to research. In one study, participants unknowingly agreed to give the company at hand their future firstborn children. More often than not, the lengthy documents aren’t designed to be understood, other researchers have concluded. Even as companies like Apple and Google add new ways to stop apps from tracking you across iOS and Android, it’s still important to pay attention to what you’re agreeing to every time you download something new.

“The option of reading through the terms of service or privacy policy is not easy. It’s not accessible,” said Nader Henein, a senior research director and fellow of information privacy at Gartner. “If you’ve had lawyers write up the policy, there’s a good chance that someone without a law degree and a good half-hour of time to dedicate to it will not be able to decipher exactly what it’s asking for.” 

But don’t worry — we can help. Here are three red flags to look out for before you hit “agree” on a privacy policy to download an app or use a service. 

Read more: 7 things data privacy experts wish you knew about app security

1. How complex is the app’s privacy policy or terms of service?

In legal disputes over privacy policy and terms of service documents, many cases don’t make it to litigation because there’s no expectation that someone is actually going to read the fine print, Henein said. There’s also no expectation that a reader will have the necessary training to understand the policy even if they did, he added. 

Apps with complex policies that bury exactly what a person is agreeing to (such as sharing their data with third parties) is disingenuous on the part of the company and should be avoided, Henein said. 

“If the language is complex, and you read the first paragraph and it makes no sense to the average person, that tells me that the company really hasn’t considered people into the equation,” Henein said. “You need to be on your guard.” 

2. Does it mention an ‘implicit agreement’?

Policies that want an implicit agreement or implicit consent should raise a red flag. This means that you don’t actually “give” your consent, but your consent is implied by a certain action or situation. Henein says this would look like a terms of service agreement that says “by browsing this webpage you agree to A, B and C.” He said this type of language isn’t enforceable and shouldn’t be enforceable.

3. Is the app monetized by collecting and selling your data?

What a policy agreement says about data collection is another important factor to consider before hitting download, according to Engin Kirda, a professor at Northeastern University’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Going hand in hand with this is how the app makes money, Kirda said — particularly if it’s free to download. 

Monetizing an app with ads can mean it’s providing a better service, but it can also mean that it’s profiting by selling your data. There’s a difference between collecting some necessary information to help the app be useful versus collecting lots of information that is sold to third-party advertisers — or could potentially be stolen.

Other warning signs to watch for

While it’s important to know what’s in a policy agreement, Kirda said there are other red flags you can spot without reading the document. Another major red flag is what permissions an app requests: For example, a calculator app doesn’t need access to your microphone or location. Also, pay attention to whether you can use the app after denying any permissions, he added. Asking for unnecessary permissions can signal nefarious activity like an app having access to your call logs or gathering data from your Wi-Fi connections, for example.

Michiel de Jong, one of the volunteers at Terms of Service; Didn’t Read — a grassroots project where anybody can help collaboratively review the terms and policies of any website — said it’s important to see that a policy won’t be allowed to change at random.

“A lot of services will reserve the right to change the policy the day after you sign up and never comply with the version you read when you signed up,” de Jong said.

In addition, de Jong said to be on the lookout for sites that make you sign a class action waiver — which means they can sue you, but you can’t sue them.

Don’t panic. You still have some control

To help you grapple with the legal jargon of service agreements and privacy policies, Henein suggested downloading the Terms of Service; Didn’t Read browser extension, which digests the documents that might be asking for your compliance and turn them into something quick and readable. ToS;DR sorts privacy policies and website terms into different classes, with Class A being very good and Class E being the worst. In addition to the class score, contributors can rate sections of the terms as Good, Bad, Blocker or Neutral. 

For example, Google is rated Class C by the site for having the ability to read a user’s private messages, track a user on other websites, and more. Stack Overflow was rated Class E for its third-party tracking practices, requiring a class action waiver and more. 

Henein noted Microsoft as a good example of how to present website terms: The tech company outlines its privacy policy in about three pages, which are broken into sections for structure and clarity. 

“Privacy policies should be written by a layperson and reviewed by a lawyer, not the other way around,” Henein said. “The expectation now is that privacy policies should get as much focus in their drafting and design as the rest of the site. They’re not something that’s a necessary evil — it’s part of the overall site, because it’s meant to be the commitment you’re making to individuals regarding how you’re going to handle their personal information.”

In addition to ToS;DR, de Jong suggested DuckDuckGo’s Privacy Essentials browser extension. The service combines data from ToS;DR with data from several other sources about encryption, trackers and more. LegiCrowd is another project demystifying terms of service that the ToS;DR team is collaborating with, but de Jong said it’s aimed more toward researchers. 

Tosback.org is a site that keeps change logs of legal policies, sometimes going back years, according to de Jong. The project was started by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but is now part of ToS;DR. 

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