Yes, I Agree

I once watched a funny Verisign Commercial in which popular singer and rapper, Wyclef Jean, played the lead role. A woman approached him with a piece of paper to sign. Wyclef Jean immediately signed without reading. After that, the woman turned the other side of the page. Guess what? It was a very long agreement that stated that Wyclef Jean has agreed to be her aupair. Poor Wyclef. He underwent lots of trouble for that mistake and was constantly bullied and intimidated by that woman’s kid. At the end of the commercial… watch what you sign for.

At my former job site, there was a law firm upstairs. One day, a lawyer asked me to help him install software that can enable him play almost every known audio or video file on his laptop. I downloaded VLC player but was too busy to go and install for him. When he came checking on my progress, I simply gave him the software on a flash disk and gave him some installation instructions. I asked him to launch the vlc.exe file, and click on next, next, next and so on. At a certain point, an agreement will pop up. I instruction him to click “I agree” and click “finish”. “How can I just agree without reading”, he asked me. Well, read if you care.

Elvizy of Elvizy’s World also told me a similar experience with installation instructions on how an Orange Cameroon’s Internet Kit is configured and installed for use on a computer. The instructions clearly ask the user to click “I agree”, without any advice on reading.

Some websites and software advise users to read the agreement before accepting it. Some even use technologies that allow the “I agree” button to show up only after a period of time, about 5 minutes, to ensure that you have read it. Some will not allow the button show up until you scroll down to the bottom of the agreement page.

Do you read before clicking on the “I Agree” button?

I wish you blue skies and all things nice,