A United Kingdom company posted a hidden offer in their online privacy agreement for a free bottle of “good wine”, but nobody noticed it for months. The company’s intention was to draw attention to the fact that most people do not read the tedious legal agreements that are required by businesses to post. Dan Neidle, a lawyer and head of the think tank Tax Policy Associates, conducted the experiment as a form of protest against the mandatory privacy policies that many businesses must have on their websites.
In February, Neidle inserted the offer for a free bottle of wine in between statements about browser cookies and advertising on the company’s website. Despite months passing, nobody claimed the free wine until May. The only person who did claim it was not a genuine participant but was simply using the offer as an example for writing their own fine print. The bottle of wine, a 2013 Château de Sales valued at around $40, was eventually sent to the individual who noticed the hidden offer.
Neidle revealed the hidden offer in a tweet, stating that the bottle of wine had finally been claimed. This was not the first time the think tank had conducted such an experiment, as they had previously hidden a similar offer when the organization initially launched two years ago. It had taken four months for someone to spot the hidden offer back then. In both cases, the experiment was aimed at highlighting the fact that the majority of people do not pay attention to the fine print in legal agreements.
The purpose of the experiment was to bring attention to the legal agreements that businesses are required to have on their websites, even though most people do not bother reading them. Neidle believes that the requirement for businesses to have privacy policies is unnecessary and a waste of money. He views it as a form of protest against the excessive regulations placed on businesses and hopes to draw attention to the issue through unconventional means. The hidden offer for a free bottle of wine was a lighthearted way of highlighting the lack of attention paid to legal agreements by the general public.