Keep TOS Changes From Burning Your Business

Many small businesses fail to notice when an online service provider changes its terms-of-service agreement. It's a case where what you don't know can very definitely hurt you.Online retailers and service providers typically require users to accept terms-of-service (TOS) agreements. Most small businesses accept these agreements as a formality. And very few bother to wade through the pages of legal mumbo-jumbo that define a typical TOS.

Usually, that isn't a problem. Sometimes, however, it's a dangerous game to play.

Thousands of small businesses, for example, rely heavily upon e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay. They trust a company like GoDaddy to handle their domain name registrations -- the lifeblood of any business with an online presence. And some companies are even using Facebook to build their intranets.

Miss a change to a company's TOS, and it could cost you a ton. Last year, for example, eBay changed its User Agreement to forbid sellers from accepting checks or money orders. There were good reasons for eBay's new policy, and the company has a good reputation for making sure users know about such policy changes. But it still could have caught some sellers by surprise.

Other companies are a bit more capricious when it comes to TOS changes. Earlier this year, for example, Facebook endured a PR fiasco when it changed its TOS governing ownership of its users' content.

Facebook eventually did an about-face and reverted to its previous TOS. The fact remains, however, that unless a provider's new and (not) improved TOS makes the news, you might never notice that your company is standing on legal quicksand.

This week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation launched an interesting new service, called TosBack, that tracks TOS changes on a number of prominent Web sites: "Terms of Service" policies on websites define how Internet businesses interact with you and use your personal information. But most web users don't read these policies -- or understand that the terms are constantly changing. To track these ever-evolving documents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is launching "TOSBack": a "terms of service" tracker for Facebook, Google, eBay, and other major websites. "Terms of service form the foundation of your relationship with social networking sites, online businesses, and other Internet communities, but most people become aware of these terms only when there's a problem," said EFF Activism and Technology Manager Tim Jones. "We created TOSBack to help consumers monitor terms of service for the websites they use everyday, and show how the terms change over time." At www.TOSBack.org, you can see a real-time feed of changes and updates to more than three dozen polices from the Internet's most popular online services. Clicking on an update brings you to a side-by-side before-and-after comparison, highlighting what has been removed from the policy and what has been added.

TosBack.org currently tracks TOS changes on more than 40 sites, including Amazon, Apple, eBay, GoDaddy, and Yahoo. Visitors can also subscribe to a RSS feed that will alert them to TOS updates.

EFF has tackled a huge job here, and TosBack.org is still clearly a work in progress. Right now, for example, the only Amazon-related TOS agreements the site tracks are for the company's Kindle e-book and MP3 Music services. Obviously, TosBack.org will fill in these gaps over time.

Already, some of the resources available on TosBack.org are very enlightening. The site now lists eight different versions of the eBay User Agreement issued between February 24 and May 15. Some of those updates happened within days or even hours of one another.

A site like TosBack.org won't exactly make it fun to review a service provider's TOS. And honestly, no sane company will waste all of its time picking through every TOS for every Web site it uses.

The idea here is to pick one's battles and to know when changes to a key provider's TOS might have a real impact on customers. Thanks to TosBack.org, that job should be at least a little easier.