Alright! A while back, I wrote about how Terms & Conditions have become the modern equivalent of scripture — ancient texts that everyone agrees are important, nobody actually reads, and we all just scroll to the bottom and click “I Accept” like we are saying Amin after a prayer we did not fully understand.
I thought maybe, just maybe, in the two years since that article, something would have changed. Perhaps a major scandal would have made people more careful. Perhaps regulators would have forced companies to simplify their legal language. Perhaps we, as a society, would have collectively decided to start reading the things we legally agree to.
Nope. None of that happened. In fact, it got worse. Let me show you what I mean.
The Experiment: What Did I Actually Agree To Last Month?
I went back through my emails and found three services I signed up for in the past 30 days: a food delivery app (new restaurant, RM12 off first order — you know how it is), a “free” AI photo editor, and a parking app that my office building forced everyone to switch to.
Total pages of Terms & Conditions across all three: 94 pages. Average time to read (at a normal reading speed): roughly 3 hours. Did I read any of them? Of course not. I had nasi lemak arriving in 20 minutes and a parking ticket to validate. Nobody has time for 94 pages of legal text written by lawyers who are paid by the word.
But here is what I discovered when I actually went back and read them (for the sake of this article — you are welcome):
📸 The AI photo editor — buried on page 13, clause 7.2 — reserves the right to use any photo you upload “for the purpose of training, improving, and commercialising machine learning models.” Translation: your selfies are now part of their training data. That nice photo of you at your cousin’s wedding? It is teaching an AI somewhere how to recognise Malaysian faces. You did not consent to this — well, actually, you did. You clicked “Accept.”
🅿️ The parking app — page 8, clause 4.5 — states that the company “may share location data with third-party partners for the purpose of traffic analysis and urban planning.” Which sounds noble until you realise: they are selling your movement patterns. They know where you park, when you arrive, when you leave, how long you stay. That data is valuable. And you gave it to them for free in exchange for the privilege of paying RM3 per hour to park at your own office.
🍜 The food delivery app — the least evil of the three, but still: clause 12.3 says they can change their delivery fee structure “at any time without prior notice.” The RM12 discount you got on your first order? They will make it back in delivery fee increases over the next six months. The math always wins.
Why Nobody Reads Them (and Why That is the Point)
Let us be honest: Terms & Conditions are not designed to be read. They are designed to be legally present — to protect the company, not to inform the user. The language is deliberately dense. The length is deliberately exhausting. The placement of the “Accept” button — large, colourful, right at the bottom — is deliberately designed to make you click without thinking.
This is not a bug. This is the business model. If people actually read the terms, a significant percentage would decline. So the terms are made unreadable. It is the legal equivalent of hiding the vegetables under a mountain of mashed potatoes and hoping the kid does not notice.
There have been attempts to fix this. The EU’s GDPR requires privacy policies to be written in “clear and plain language.” Some companies have experimented with “TL;DR” summaries next to their full terms. A few brave startups have tried visual contracts with icons and bullet points. And yet, in 2026, 94 pages is still normal. The incentives have not changed. Companies benefit from you not reading. So they keep making it not worth your while to read.
The One Line That Should Scare You
Across all three of my recently-accepted agreements, I found variations of the same sentence. It goes something like this: “We reserve the right to modify these terms at any time, and continued use of the service constitutes acceptance of the modified terms.”
Read that again. Slowly. They can change the agreement without telling you, and your continued use of the app counts as acceptance. So the terms you agreed to last month may not be the terms you are bound by today. And you would have no way of knowing unless you periodically re-read 94 pages of legal text — which, as we have established, nobody does.
This is not a contract. This is a blank cheque. And we have all signed it. Repeatedly. For parking apps and food delivery and photo editors that make our skin look slightly smoother.
What Would Actually Change Things?
I am not optimistic. But if I had to design a solution, it would be simple: a mandatory one-page summary. Every Terms & Conditions document should be required by law to include a single page — maximum 300 words, plain language, no legal jargon — that answers five questions:
1. What data do you collect about me?
2. Who do you share it with?
3. Can you change these terms without telling me?
4. What happens to my data if I delete my account?
5. What am I actually paying (including hidden fees)?
That is it. Five questions. One page. If every service had to answer these honestly, in writing, on a page you could actually read in under two minutes, we would all make better decisions. Some services would lose half their users overnight. And honestly? Good. If your business model depends on people not understanding what they agreed to, your business model is the problem.
But until that happens — and I am not holding my breath — here is my advice: the next time you click “I Accept,” pause for five seconds. Ask yourself: what am I actually giving away? Because in 2026, your attention is currency, your data is product, and your “Accept” is the most valuable signature you will give all day. Treat it accordingly. Or do not. The app is waiting. Your nasi lemak is getting cold. I get it.
