After three months of clandestine placement within the privacy policy of a tax-focused think tank’s website, a free bottle of wine has been successfully claimed.
Tax Policy Associates inserted the offer in February as an experiment to gauge whether users would engage with the full terms. Headed by Dan Neidle, who has previously reported on significant tax cases, including that of former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, the organization initiated the wine offer.
“We know nobody reads this, because we added in February that we’d send a bottle of good wine to the first person to contact us, and it was only in May that we got a response,” now states a sentence in their revised privacy policy.
Describing it as a “childish protest” against the obligatory inclusion of privacy policies on business websites, Mr. Neidle lamented the requirement, asserting, “Every tiny coffee shop has to have a privacy policy on their website, it’s crazy. It’s money that’s being wasted.”
Under the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR), any company holding personal data, irrespective of size or sector, must maintain a privacy policy, according to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
The individual who uncovered the passage on the website was considered by Mr. Neidle to have “kind of cheated” as they were in the process of drafting their own policy and had been surveying examples. Nonetheless, upon contacting the organization, they were informed they were the first to spot the offer.
Mr. Neidle shared that this initiative mirrored a tactic employed by the band Van Halen, who famously requested a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed as part of their tour rider. This seemingly peculiar request served as a test to ensure promoters were attentive to their instructions, including intricate technical details.
Inspired by this strategy, Mr. Neidle noted, “It was a brilliant strategy to see if people were paying attention.”
