Terms Of Services Research Articles

Selling Your Soul on the Information Superhighway: Consenting to Services in Direct-to-Consumer Tele-Mental Health

Direct-to-consumer tele-mental health services—therapy delivered by video conference, email, and text message—is a burgeoning model of service delivery. The practice of on-demand digital psychotherapy presents ethical questions, as new economic models, service delivery systems, and therapeutic models are introduced. Virtual therapy, now offered on a subscription basis by third-party providers, requires users to accept Terms of Service (ToS) agreements to access services. This article describes the results of a survey in which participants ( n = 579) were asked to compare the values of the Human Rights Framework with the language of one tele-mental health platform’s ToS user agreement. Findings suggest that those clients with prior experience with a mental health professional will find the ToS agreements to be the most ethically compromised. Similarly, employed and better educated individuals also found the ToS to be ethically suspect. The most vulnerable of the groups we surveyed, individuals who hold less education and those who are unemployed, may be at most risk for signing consent to a system they do not understand. The study provides one example of the ethical questions that emerge from the introduction of a new model of for-profit service provision in mental health. Recommendations for consumers and practitioners are suggested.

Belt conveyers rollers average term of service

The paper is proved to one of the important conveyer transport system task – to roller’s term of service (TS) determination. The task solving permit to evaluate the different designs belt conveyers reliable. The article represent the tasks of belt conveyers roller’s average TS determination were set and solved for the different types of roller supports. Dynamic efforts arised with the loading motion and caused with belt bend are principal factor for the calculation of TS rollers. The graph of dependence roller’s average TS from belt velocity for different roller’s types were obtained. Obtain analyses results permit to set: average roller TS decrease under velocity increases for all types of roller’s, TS for dumping overhead roller supports and damping roller supports is substantially greater, then for hard and overhead roller supports. In addition, at some values of the belt velocity TS service can sharply decrease for all types of roller supports. It takes place in resonances related to vibrations of belt at motion of large pieces of load. Achieved results may be applied in mining, metallurgical and building industry.

INVESTIGATING THE SATISFACTION STATUS OF THE PATIENTS APPLYING TO ERCIYES UNIVERSITY HEALTH ADMINISTRATION AND RESEARCH CENTER TO GET HEALTH TOURISM SERVICE

ABSTRACT Aim: In this study it is aimed to investigate the satisfaction status of the patients applying Erciyes University Health Administration and Research Center (HARC) to get health tourism service in terms of the infrastructure of the institution, employee relations and service quality.Material-method: This descriptive study was conducted on 27 patients applying Erciyes University HARC between the years of 2016 – 2017. The English health tourism questionnaire prepared in the light of literature by the researchers has been conducted to the patients who accepted to participate in the research as data collection tool. The questionnaire included 15 questions about the policlinic/clinic applied, where the patient come from, the gender, age, education level, income level, the reason of arriving the country, the reasons of preferring this hospital and the satisfaction from the institution and staff, and an open-ended question asking for expectations and suggestions. Questionnaires of the pediatric patients were answered by their relatives. Frequency and percentage distributions were calculated in the analysis of the data.Results: 55.6% of the patients are male, 40.7% are over 41 years old, 26.6% are university graduates and incomes of 37.0% are in the range of TL 1501- TL 3000. 74.1% of patients to get health services, 7.4% to visit their relatives and 18.5% of the patient for other reasons came to Turkey. In our study, all of the patients (100%) answered "I am satisfied with the physicians of the hospital". Patients have stated that they were pleased mostly with "Safe country", "Hygiene status of the hospital", "Being informed about health status", "Approach of assistant staff", "International quality standards of the hospital", "Efforts of the hospital about solving the problems’ ‘Communication with assistant medical staff''. Areas that the satisfaction rate is relatively low (85.2%) were ''Education Quality of the Assistant Health Staff’ ‘The Hospital's Side Services (accommodation, transportation, interpreter ... etc.)," Short duration of the service that the patient received from the hospital".Conclusion: In our study, it has been found that there is general satisfaction in terms of the infrastructure of the institution, personnel relations and service quality. 85.2% satisfaction has been detected even in the areas that were relatively less than the satisfaction level ''Education Quality of the Assistant Health Personnel’ ‘The Hospital's Side Services (accommodation, transportation, interpreter ... etc.)," Shortened service period that the patient took from hospital". Keywords: Health Tourism, Hospital, Satisfaction

The biggest lie on the Internet: ignoring the privacy policies and terms of service policies of social networking services

ABSTRACTThis paper addresses ‘the biggest lie on the internet’ with an empirical investigation of privacy policy (PP) and terms of service (TOS) policy reading behavior. An experimental survey (N = 543) assessed the extent to which individuals ignored PP and TOS when joining a fictitious social networking service (SNS), NameDrop. Results reveal 74% skipped PP, selecting the ‘quick join’ clickwrap. Average adult reading speed (250–280 words per minute), suggests PP should have taken 29–32 minutes and TOS 15–17 minutes to read. For those that didn’t select the clickwrap, average PP reading time was 73 seconds. All participants were presented the TOS and had an average reading time of 51 seconds. Most participants agreed to the policies, 97% to PP and 93% to TOS, with decliners reading PP 30 seconds longer and TOS 90 seconds longer. A regression analysis identifies information overload as a significant negative predictor of reading TOS upon sign up, when TOS changes, and when PP changes. Qualitative findings suggest that participants view policies as nuisance, ignoring them to pursue the ends of digital production, without being inhibited by the means. Implications are revealed as 98% missed NameDrop TOS ‘gotcha clauses’ about data sharing with the NSA and employers, and about providing a first-born child as payment for SNS access.

Labour law for TOS and HITs? reflections on the potential for applying ‘labour law analogies’ to crowdworkers, focusing on employee representation

A growing number of people are performing work tasks via online platforms, referred to under various designations such as ‘Human Intelligence Tasks’ (HITs), under conditions set out not in an employment contract but through the standardised Terms of Service (TOS) of their contract partner. This article argues that, in spite of increasing evidence of precarious working conditions and circumvention of labour law and social protection standards in ‘turking’-style work environments, attempts to classify these forms of crowdwork as employment relationships are of limited practical use and benefit for those working in the industry. Instead, departing from much-debated concepts of a ‘purposive’ approach to labour law, it makes the case for a differential analysis of the aims of diverse elements of labour law and a consideration of whether, and to what degree, these can be instrumentalised for dealing with a contractual relationship that, notwithstanding socio-economic similarities, is fundamentally different from the employment relationship for which that law was developed, in several respects. It discusses the merits of rules on workplace employee representation and explores options for operationalising these for crowdworkers. For this purpose, it considers forms of collective organisation of crowdworkers via various networks as they already exist and are emerging in practice to question whether it is or should be reasonable for crowdworkers to be legally entitled to rights analogous to the workplace representation bodies such as works councils, which would entitle them to rights ranging from information and consultation to co-determination as well as veto rights on specific issues.

Trust and Communication in a Doctor- Patient Relationship: A Literature Review.

Background: The changing pattern in the doctor-patient relationship is becoming more of a challenge for health care providers. For a healthy and effective doctor-patient relation, trust and communication is considered to play a vital role. Aim: This literature review was conducted with the aim to gather the knowledge and concepts pertaining to communication and trust in a doctor-patient relationship and how they influence patient satisfaction and perceived quality of health care services. Method: Various electronic databases including PubMed, Hinari, Cochrane, Scopus and Google Scholar were used to search for the articles. Related article titles were selected which was narrowed down to abstract of interested articles and the final 17 selected full articles were reviewed. Results: All the articles reviewed showed that both trust and communication were positively related to patient satisfaction and perceived quality of health care services in-terms of better compliance with medication and following medical advice; both in developed and developing country. Though, the determinants of trust differed slightly between rural and urban setting. Apart from the doctor’s communication skills, level of interpersonal treatment and knowledge about the patient, respect for the doctors and treatment assurance lead to better trust as well in rural setting. Patient -centered communication with two-way conversation using open-ended questions leads to better communication. Collaborative decision-making leads to better management and better chances of compliance with treatment. Conclusion: The current evidence suggests that patient-centered approach with effective communications skills and trust leads to better management and improved patient satisfaction. This is associated to better adherence to the treatment, better health outcomes and better perceived quality of healthcare services.

The biggest lie on the web: Coming to terms with the failure to read through the lens of the First Amendment

As lines between public and private spaces online continue to blur, contracts are moving closer to the day when government actors will be involved in all of them. When 90%+ of online users do not read the terms-of-service (ToS) agreements of social media sites, they are unaware of possible repercussions of blindly assenting to these unread contracts, including potentially relinquishing a number of their constitutional rights. Primary among these is their First Amendment right to petition the government for relief in a court of law. In most ToSs, the online user must agree to mandatory arbitration in the site owner’s venue of choice. Secondary is their sole right to their intellectual property afforded by the Constitution. Through an online survey (N = 235), this article reports data concerning respondents’ attitudes toward reading ToSs, their demographic information, and their likelihood of accepting a forum-selection term from Twitter, contrary to their potential constitutional rights. Two major findings are that: (a) there was no effect of education on the likelihood of rejecting Google’s unfavorable copyright-related terms; and (b) 63.2% of those who state they would not, under any condition, accept the unfavorable Twitter forum-selection term do, indeed, belong to or have belonged to Twitter.

The Biggest Lie on the Internet: Ignoring the Privacy Policies and Terms of Service Policies of Social Networking Services

This paper addresses ‘the biggest lie on the internet’ with an empirical investigation of privacy policy (PP) and terms of service (TOS) policy reading behavior. An experimental survey (N=543) assessed the extent to which individuals ignore PP and TOS when joining a fictitious social networking site, NameDrop. Results reveal 74% skipped PP, selecting ‘quick join.’ For readers, average PP reading time was 73 seconds, and average TOS reading time was 51 seconds. Based on average adult reading speed (250-280 words per minute), PP should have taken 30 minutes to read, TOS 16 minutes. A regression analysis revealed information overload as a significant negative predictor of reading TOS upon signup, when TOS changes, and when PP changes. Qualitative findings further suggest that participants view policies as nuisance, ignoring them to pursue the ends of digital production, without being inhibited by the means. Implications were revealed as 98% missed NameDrop TOS ‘gotcha clauses’ about data sharing with the NSA and employers, and about providing a first-born child as payment for SNS access.

Do Consumers Read Terms of Service Agreements When Installing Software? -- A Two-Study Empirical Analysis --

An important issue in all transactions is the details of the agreement between the parties. This is particularly important in on-line transactions where consumers bind themselves to the detailed terms and conditions without reading them. This paper examines this from two perspectives. The first study reports what respondents self-report they do in terms of amount of time and amount of Terms of Service (TOS) agreements they read. The second study report actual observations of respondents as they “installed” software. The results show most respondents read very little of TOS agreements and the amount of time spent is less than one minute, making it impossible to actually read much of agreements that average over 6,000 words. The primary reasons for not reading TOS agreements are the length of the contract and the perceived cost vs. benefit of reading it, not the font size or legal language. Managerial and public policy implications are examined.

Privacy in Virtual Worlds: A US Perspective

Virtual Worlds (VW) are intricate 3-dimensional, vivid environments that are the digital equivalents of the physical world (Glibert, 2011). VWs offer new and engaging methods of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) used for conducting many kinds of processes and functions, from education and training, to new product development and customer service. A vast amount of personal information can be recorded, stored, and analyzed in VW. This paper presents a rich account of what today’s VW consist of and the current state of privacy rights in VW in the United States.First the paper explains why VW should be considered separate from other ICT. Then privacy rights in the United States are discussed, and how these rights could, or should, apply to VW. Currently privacy rights of VW users are wholly created and defined by the Terms of Service (TOS) of the VW. The argument is put forth that privacy rights need to be approached in two ways, from the VW users working to improve their rights in the TOS and improved government privacy regulation as called for by the VW community. Privacy laws or the right to privacy is critical at this point in the development of VW. As in the days of the Wild West, the law has been slow to make its way into the realm of VW. In conclusion, critical issues are identified to be addressed in future research projects.

Look before You License: The Use of Public Sharing Websites in Building Co-Created Community Repositories

AbstractThe legal aspects of building a co-created community repository (CCR) are explored through the examination of existing commercial web-based services. To determine whether commercial services offer a practicable option or a model for the creation of a CCR’s terms of service (TOS), we analyzed six websites. The TOS contain the rules under which content can be stored, accessed, shared, etc. This TOS assessment is based on the consideration of four attributes, applied in a legal context: functionality, integrity, provenance, and permanence. While many of the features of a successful CCR are found across the services, none possesses all of the required elements. Recommendations for preferable CCR TOS are offered.

Consumer Privacy Choices, Informed Consent, and Baseline Protections to Facilitate Market Transactions in the Cloud

So many of our daily activities now take place “in the cloud,” where we use our devices to tap into massive networks that span the globe. Virtually every time that we plug into a new service, the service requires us to click the seemingly ubiquitous box indicating that we have read and agreed to the provider’s terms of service (TOS) and privacy policy. If a user does not click on this box, he is denied access to the service, but agreeing to these terms without reading them can negatively impact the user’s legal rights. As part of this work, we analyzed and categorized the terms of TOS agreements and privacy policies of several major cloud services to aid in our assessment of the state of user privacy in the cloud. Our empirical analysis showed that providers take similar approaches to user privacy and were consistently more detailed when describing the user’s obligations to the provider than when describing the provider’s obligations to the user. This asymmetry, combined with these terms’ nonnegotiable nature, led us to conclude that the current approach to user privacy in the cloud is in need of serious revision. In this Article, we suggest adopting a legal regime that requires companies to provide baseline protections for personal information and also to take steps to enhance the parties’ control over their own data. We emphasize the need for a regime that allows for “data control” in the cloud, which we define as consisting of two parts: 1) the ability to withdraw data and require a service provider to stop using or storing the user’s information (data withdrawal); and 2) the ability to move data to a new location without being locked into a particular provider (data mobility). Ultimately, our goal with this piece is to apply established law and privacy theories to services in the cloud and set forth a model for the protection of information privacy that recognizes the importance of informed and empowered users.

Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act’

Facebook, like many communication services and social media sites, uses its Terms of Service (ToS) to forbid children under the age of 13 from creating an account. Such prohibitions are not uncommon in response to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which seeks to empower parents by requiring commercial Web site operators to obtain parental consent before collecting data from children under 13. Given economic costs, social concerns, and technical issues, most general–purpose sites opt to restrict underage access through their ToS. Yet in spite of such restrictions, research suggests that millions of underage users circumvent this rule and sign up for accounts on Facebook. Given strong evidence of parental concern about children’s online activity, this raises questions of whether or not parents understand ToS restrictions for children, how they view children’s practices of circumventing age restrictions, and how they feel about children’s access being regulated. In this paper, we provide survey data that show that many parents know that their underage children are on Facebook in violation of the site’s restrictions and that they are often complicit in helping their children join the site. Our data suggest that, by creating a context in which companies choose to restrict access to children, COPPA inadvertently undermines parents’ ability to make choices and protect their children’s data. Our data have significant implications for policy–makers, particularly in light of ongoing discussions surrounding COPPA and other age–based privacy laws.

Authorization and governance in virtual worlds

Although a variety of formal and informal mechanisms govern behavior in virtual worlds, the proprietors of such worlds increasingly have relied upon formal legal claims to sanction undesired user behavior. A range of such legal claims might be asserted in different factual situations: copyright infringement, or trespass to computers, or circumvention of technical protections. But each of these claims relies upon the authorization status of the targeted user. Authorization is largely an incident of the virtual world proprietor's Terms of Service (ToS). Thus, the ToS is increasingly regarded as a license to access the proprietor's servers; violation of the ToS annuls authorization to access the servers. The result is that any misbehavior by users, in violation of the ToS, can be recast as a violation of copyright, or trespass, or technical circumvention laws, even if the undesired behavior has little bearing on the variety legal claim asserted. This mutation of legal claims is troubling, not only from the standpoint of legal policy, but as a social policy to govern virtual worlds.

Public lives and private communities: The terms of service agreement and life in virtual worlds

This paper argues that the terms of service (TOS) agreements, also sometimes referred to as end user license agreements (EULAs), governing virtual worlds have important implications for the political and legal structures under which our virtual selves will function. This essay will focus on four key political concepts central to all TOS agreements studied. These concepts include contract language governing speech codes, intellectual property rights, privacy, and the relationship of the gaming world to the real world. If indeed these agreements offer governing constraints for people functioning in virtual spaces, then not only should their anti–democratic construction be considered, but as people spend more time in virtual worlds, these structures will become increasingly important to many aspects of our virtual identities.