While transparency is touted as the “best” word for businesses to use to assure customers their privacy is being carefully tended to, customers would do well to look to a business’s privacy policy for the real truth about the relationship.

A report from Australia’s Consumer Policy Research Centre and the University of New South Wales shows where the pitfalls are. A key problem for survey participants was they didn’t understand much of the policy terminology often used, including ‘pseudonymised information’ (81%), a ‘hashed email address’ (74%), or an ‘advertising ID’ (67%). Sadly, this is often not accidental, as many companies use complex, dense and unfamiliar language in privacy policies in the hope customers will resign and sign, rather than demand clear explanation.