Terms and conditions experiment

Why it pays to read the small print

Only 41 percent of Austrians actually read the small print on the internet - and reading it can be worthwhile, as an experiment shows.(Bild: stock.adobe.com)

"Read and accepted" - anyone who regularly surfs the internet knows this phrase only too well. However, only very few users actually read what is really in the small print. Yet reading it can be well worthwhile, as a recent experiment shows.

According to the latest Eurobarometer figures from the EU Commission in 2016, less than 41% of people in this country read the small print. This still puts Austria in the middle of the pack across the EU. In the Netherlands, the leader in the ranking, as many as 68% of respondents admitted to ignoring the General Terms and Conditions and other terms and conditions - which is mostly to their own disadvantage, but in exceptional cases also brings certain advantages, as an experiment in the UK shows.