One-Third of Top Websites Restrict Customers’ Right to Sue

Jeremy B. Merrill

Walk into the grocery store, and you can sue if a clumsy clerk drops a box on your head. But what happens if a website leaks your personal data? Or if an online retailer misleads you about the cost of a purchase? Depending on the site you’re visiting, your legal rights are murkier.

That’s because, tucked into the dense legalese of their terms-of-service rules, many of the Internet’s most popular sites have inserted language that forbids users from suing if something goes wrong, an analysis by The Upshot has found. In some cases, you don’t even have to pretend to read a contract and click an “I accept” box for the restrictions to kick in.