by Jolie O'Dell

It was quite in vogue last year to be incensed over the privacy-related misdeeds of a certain monolithic social network, but let’s be honest — did anyone ever read the privacy policy to begin with? How about the Terms of Service?

Most of us eagerly (or irritatedly) scroll through the miles of legalese and click on the “I Agree — Sign Me Up!” button without reading a single word of what we’re agreeing to. Most of the time, there are no negative consequences, but every now and then, not knowing what you’re getting into can end up biting you.

The website or app you’re signing up for could simply be tracking your clicks for their own internal measurement tools, but it could also be gathering data to sell to marketers and advertisers. It could be selling your contact information to a third party, as well.

So why don’t more privacy-craving consumers read the privacy policies of the apps they use?

The overwhelming answer is they’re just too long. The longest privacy policies among the top 1,000 websites would take around 45 minutes to read. The average policy takes around 10 minutes to read.

And while most of the websites (72%, in fact) allow users to opt out of tracking mechanisms, around 40% require their users to take a few extra clicks to the Network Advertising Initiative’s website to opt out.

What do you think: Should privacy policies and terms of service be short and sweet enough for users to actually read them, or do you think that would increase tracking opt-outs enough that it would hurt the companies in question?

This infographic was created by SelectOut, an ad-tracking opt-out initiative, with data collected from the top 1,000 websites as per Quantcast.