New AOL Privacy And Terms Policies Go Live March 31

There are plenty of changes underway at AOL. Earlier this month, AOL announced plans to purchase the Huffington Post website and news ooperation. Then, AOL announced to its members that it will revise, consolidate, and simplify its online privacy and terms-of-use policies:

From: AOLLegal
Date: February 20, 2011 4:54:10 AM EST
Subject: Updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for AOL Users

Dear AOL Users,
AOL is working hard to change and improve the way we serve you across all aspects of our services. We have recently relaunched and improved many of our consumer experiences, including AOL.com and MapQuest.com. As we continue to improve AOL for you, some of the improvements are updating the ways that we interact with you and your information. As a result, we want to update you on our Terms of Service (TOS), which contains the agreements between you and AOL.

In addition, we are also updating our Privacy Policy. Privacy is incredibly important to all of us and we want to present the updates to our privacy policy in a simplified format designed to help clarify what information we collect, how we use it, and the marketing preferences and online advertising choices available to you. Both the updated TOS and Privacy Policy are available online now and will take effect on March 31, 2011.

You can find the old Terms of Service here. What I like about this announcement: it is a step in the right direction to provide consumers with full disclosure. Consolidating and simplifing documents that are usually difficult to read is a huge benefit. I also like that the targeted advertising opt-out link is front-and-center on the AOL Privacy main page. I like that the new policy discusses mobile devices. With the rapid pace of technology advances, website policies should change frequently.

I have not performed a line-by-line comparison of the old and new policies. I am not an AOL user, so I am sure that some AOL users will perform this analysis. There may be policy changes embedded that users object to.

Previously, AT&T made policy changes regarding online targeted advertising. These are always helpful for consumers.

What do you think? Will AOL users find the new policy easier to read? Will AOL continue to revise its policies as its busienss changes? Share your opinions below.