On June 4, 2009, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched TOSBack – a site that tracks changes in the terms of service for major websites such as Facebook, Google, Apple, and eBay. If you’re wondering why anyone would be interested in such a thing, you may want to revisit the controversy that accompanied the revisions to the Facebook terms of service.
At TOSBack, users can click on one of over two dozen organizations to identify changes to the organization’s terms of service and/or privacy policies. TOSBack allows users to compare new and older versions of those policies, with a side-by-side view that shows additions and deletions to the policies. Users can also subscribe to an RSS feed that will alert them to new changes in the policies. TOSBack will undoubtedly help consumers identify changes that have been made to the policies of websites they visit. Nevertheless, because TOSBack exhaustively documents all changes to the policies it tracks, some users may find themselves spending considerable time sifting through immaterial changes.