Are Online Privacy Policies Readable?

This work examines the question of: are on-line privacy policies understandable to the users of the Internet? This examination is undertaken by collecting privacy policies from the most popular sites on the Internet, and analyzing their readability using a number of readability measures. The study finds that the results are consistent regardless of the readability measure utilized. The paper also compares its results with the results from previous studies on this topic. The paper concludes that, on average, privacy policies are becoming more readable. However, it also concludes that they are still beyond the capability of a large section of Internet users; and that roughly 20% of the policies require an educational level approaching a post-graduate degree to support their comprehension.