How to Analyze a Complex Software or Web Service EULA the Easy Way
If you’re concerned about privacy when installing software or using web services, reading terms of service is vital. EULAlyzer makes it much easier.
When you install software or sign up for a web service, you always need to agree to the End User License Agreement (EULA). We’re all guilty of not reading terms of service and blindly agreeing to them. License agreements are usually extremely long and full of legal terminology that can confuse even the most privacy-conscious user.
That’s where EULAlyzer comes in (link below). It scans through the long agreements and highlights the most important parts that deal with advertising, pop up ads, and personal tracking.
Scan Software and Web Service Policies with EULAlyzer
Using EULAlyzer is easy to use and it’s free for personal use. When you’re installing a program and get to the part of the wizard where you need to agree to the terms of service, drag the “+” icon to the text to copy it over.
Or you can just copy and paste the license agreement from a web service into EULAlyzer and click the Analyze button.
After it analyzes the terms of service, it brings up the key areas of the agreement you’ll want to pay attention to. For instance, here I put in the Facebook Terms of Service, and there’s a lot hidden in there about your data being given to advertisers.
The results are rated on an interest scale of 1-10 with 10 being the things you’ll want to take a close look at. Just click on the result, and it will bring up that portion of the agreement so you can read it over.
Using this should help you get a better understanding of the type of information that’s being shared with third-party advertisers and the type of personal tracking service is doing. Even though a web service or software program is free, you might not want to trade your privacy for its convenience.
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Austin Krause
September 26, 2013 at 8:11 pm
Where has this program been all my life? This is great for looking at those pesky long EULA agreements.
KONRAD POTH
September 27, 2013 at 10:18 am
I’m a lawyer. I’ve read enough of the obscure gotcha garbage contained in EULAs to make me wish I had been a Kindergarten teacher instead. In reality, the only people who slosh through those garbage swamps are the pathologically paranoid. I simply accept them with the full knowledge that I am likely to be inundated with ads for services and products I neither need nor want – BUT, it hasn’t really happened. Norton’s and Gmail do a fine job of keeping me free of that. I just periodically empty the spam bucket.