You can spot the words “privacy policy” at the bottom of nearly every website. Don’t be fooled. Those policies are more about data collection than privacy.

Companies use these policies to alert you to how they track your location, read your emails, spy on your Web browsing — and sell some of that to advertisers.

It doesn’t help that these disclaimers are close to unintelligible.

The policy at Facebook (FB) is 9,110 words long. LinkedIn (LNKD) comes in at 7,895 words. You’d need to be a sophomore in college to fully understand the disclaimers at Netflix (NFLX) and WhatsApp, according to a Flesch-Kincaid readability test. Read more…