EULA: What are you signing away?
Software developers and vendors have used standard contracts to protect themselves, their products and services, and to set the terms of agreements with customers. However, in doing so they often set legally binding terms and conditions that consumer advocacy groups in the US and elsewhere would argue overstep the bounds of what should be expected or permissible.
When consumers buy software, they typically don't spend much time reading through the rather long, tortuous legalese that makes up the end user licensing agreement (EULA) or terms of service (TOS) agreement that users must agree to before getting access to a product or service.
However, distributed applications, social networks and Web services enable a growing number of vendors to access the innards of users' machines and possibly make use of their private data and personal property, often in ways unknown and with consumers unaware they are doing so.
