There are no promises in the words, “We care about user privacy.”

Yet, these words appear on privacy policy after privacy policy, serving as disingenuous banners to hide potentially invasive corporate practices, including clandestine data collection, sharing, and selling.

This is no accident. It is a strategy.

In the US, companies that break their own privacy policies can—and do—face lawsuits over misleading and deceiving their users, including making false statements about data privacy. But users are handicapped in this legal fight, as successful lawsuits and filings are rare.