‘A bottle of good wine’ for free: How an NGO protested against website privacy policy pages using a sneak attack freebie that went viral

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How often do you read through terms and conditions, EULA’s and privacy policies? Although we know we should scour the fine print, it’s something few of us ever bother to do, and certainly not fully.

Non-profit organization Tax Policy Associates wanted to prove how pointless these documents are, and so in February 2024 added a line to its privacy policy, offering a “bottle of good wine” to the first person who spotted the offer and got in touch.

After three months of nobody noticing the addition, the reward was finally found by someone who chanced upon it after looking at several examples of privacy policies online to get an idea of how to create their own.

Not the first time

The organization’s head, Dan Neidle, shared the story on X and told the BBC it was “my childish protest that all businesses have to have a privacy policy and no one reads it. Every tiny coffee shop has to have a privacy policy on their website, it’s crazy. It’s money that’s being wasted.”

In its coverage, which was the most read story on the site, the BBC pointed out that any company that holds personal data, “including small businesses and charities”, has to have a privacy policy under the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR).

This is actually the second time that Tax Policy Associates has made a sneaky addition to its privacy policy. The first time it took four months to be found. “We did it again to see if people were paying more attention and they’re not,” Neidle told the BBC.

The writing in the firm’s privacy policy has since been changed following the discovery and now says, “We know nobody reads this, because we added in February that we’d send a bottle of good wine to the first person to contact us, and it was only in May that we got a response.”

If you’re wondering what counts as a “good” bottle of wine in this instance, the answer, according to the BBC, is a Château de Sales 2013/14, Pomerol.

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