About TOS Fairness

Most online user agreements are stacked in favor of the corporation, and not in favor of the individual user. We aim to change that, and keep it that way. TOSfairness is a collective of volunteer attorneys and netizens focused on corporate transparency in murky 'click' agreements on the web, on phones, on games, and online.

No one (and we mean NO ONE) reads every word of every agreement before joining a new website or agreeing to new terms of service, whether on a computer, or on your phone. Well, until now. Now, we read and rate as many of them for you as we can, in order of demand, so you can feel safer signing them. Awesome, right? You're welcome.

TOS Fairness is brought to you by Break Diving, Inc., a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt not-for-profit headquartered in New York with one primary mission: helping individuals succeed in life. In order for people to succeed in life, they should probably know exactly what they are actually signing. Right? Right!

TOS Fairness grew out of founder and attorney Monroe Mann's increasing frustration with the American court system as well as the absolutely horrifically unfair online terms of services that people were (and are) unknowingly or unwittingly signing.

While it may be possible to fight each and every company in each and every state and in each and every country, it would take decades, require thousands and thousands of plaintiffs, and inevitably, many unfair terms of service agreements would slip under the courts' radars. Equally importantly, many judges are just not that accurate in their decisions, totally ignoring the facts (or are downright partisan). Sadly, for these reasons, even if you are able to take a company to court, you often can't trust the judge to make the right decision. So, instead of using our flawed legal system and the usually incompetent U.S. Congress to curb errant companies (which has not worked), our intent here is to help avoid online users worldwide from having to use their legal system or even hire an attorney in the first place--by encouraging companies to voluntarily make the terms of their agreements clear and fair, with terms disclosed upfront.

So, instead of trying to fight these battles from the outside, Break Diving founder Dr. Monroe Mann, PhD, Esq, MBA, LLM, ME decided to fight these companies from the inside, by creating the TOS Fairness Project: it is our hope that by using peer pressure and public awareness, we will be able to encourage companies to voluntarily update their terms of services to be more in favor of the consumer. Those that don't, we hope, will lose business and good will to those companies that adhere to our online user bill of rights.

Our ratings result from the tireless work of volunteer attorneys from around the world (who we hope to pay small stipends to eventually), as well as the candid feedback from actual users who interact with the terms of services in question every day.

Thanks for visiting us, and please, spread the word. The more people who know to come to TOSFairness prior to clicking "I agree", the better off the world will be!

Becoming a User

First, you don't have to sign up. If you just want to read the ratings, you can use the service for free without signing up!

If you do sign up to use TOS Fairness as a user, you will become an active part of the solution! As soon as you sign up, you are able to rate the agreements and companies yourself on the "user ratings tab" of each agreement, and your score will be averaged into the historical user ratings. Each user rating includes a comment box where you will explain your experience with that company and its terms of service. Only your first name is disclosed. If you delete your account, all of your ratings and comments will also be deleted. Simple as that. For more details, we also suggest you read our simple, fair, and short terms of service/privacy policy.

Whether you sign up or not, you can use our service without fear, knowing that we have a very high TOSfairness rating based on our very own bill of rights and tos rating system. In other words, you can trust us.

NOTE: Like wikipedia, we survive and thrive on donations. As mentioned above, we are a not-for-profit project of Break Diving, Inc., a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation based in New York, in the United States of America. All donations to Break Diving, Inc. will help to further the reach of this TOSfairness website, help to bring on additional coders and attorneys, keep our TOSfairness service free forever to users, and ensure that the ideals of transparency espoused on this website and in our bill of rights continue to spread throughout the world. Even $1 will be of great help to us in keeping this project alive. Thank you in advance for your support!

Contact

Got something to say? If you would like to get in touch, have found coding bugs, would like to make a suggestion for improvement, or are a company with a comment or concern, please send an email to info @ break diving . org. Someone from our staff will get back to you as soon as possible. More contact information can be found at www.breakdiving.org