Do You Ever Actually Read Privacy Policies? [MakeUseOf Poll]

Shooting Smartphones

To answer this week’s question please scroll down the page until you see the poll staring back at you. But first, we need to look at the results from last week, when we asked, “How Often Do You Take Photos With Your Smartphone?”

Out of a total of 279 votes, 39.8% chose At Least Once a Week, 19% chose At Least Once a Month, 18.6% chose At Least Once a Day, 9.3% chose All Day, Every Day!, 7.5% chose At Least Once a Year, 3.2% chose I Don’t Own a Smartphone!, and 2.5% chose Never.

These results show how insanely common smartphone photography is, with the vast majority of people taking at least one photo with their smartphone every month. Most of those admit to taking photos with their smartphone every week, with a healthy percentage partaking in this activity on a daily basis.

We really shouldn’t be surprised by this, as smartphones offer a simple and effective way to take photos at any and every opportunity. Prior to their invention, most people simply didn’t have that capacity, with very few people actively carrying their cameras around with them all the time. Barring professional photographers, naturally.

Comment of the Week

We received some great comments, including those from Peter Fitzsimmons, Joe Birch, and likefun butnot. Comment Of The Week goes to Mark “Mr. Marcus” Major, who earns our admiration and affection for this comment:

The fact that my cellphone is almost constantly with me and easier to get to than my other camera devices (ie: my tablet and my stand-alone “point n shoot” camera) makes it a no brainer to use for picture taking. If I’m planning on being somewhere where I know that I’ll be shooting photos well ahead of time then I may decide to use my camera. Still, the ease of auto back-up (cloud storage) and the editing tools now included with cellphones, it provides a compelling argument to leave the extra hardware behind and move about unencumbered by the added “bulk” the other devices can bring.

We chose this comment because it offers the most common sense approach to using smartphones for taking photos. These are devices we carry with us everywhere we go, they’re small enough to fit into a pocket, and yet they’re able to shoot high quality images. Smartphones may not be perfect, but at least as far as on-the-fly photography goes, they’re an absolute Godsend.

Privacy Policy Particulars

Spotify has changed its privacy policy to give it much more scope to spy on what you’re doing while using the service. This went down about as well as a fart in a crowded elevator, and forced the company to issue an apologize over the way the changes were implemented.

The new policy is not going away though, with the music streaming company adamant it needs access to your photos, contacts, and location information to help it tailor the service to your individual needs. This is a step too far for some, including Minecraft creator Markus Persson, who has promised to cancel his subscription as a direct result of the change in policy.

This led to us wondering how much attention MakeUseOf readers pay to privacy policies. Do you always read them, no matter how long and boring they may be? Do you skip past them, trusting there are laws preventing companies taking too many liberties? Please vote in the poll below to let us know.

Once you have voted in the poll above, please explain in the comments section below why you voted that way. Do you read through privacy policies and terms and conditions with an almost religious fervor? Do you just accept whatever changes tech companies want to throw at you?

The more information you can provide with your comment, the more accurate our conclusions can be based on the results. The best comment of the week will win our everlasting admiration and affection. At least until we all meet back here again this time next week with a new question.

Image Credits: Perspecsys Photos via Flickr