About
knewbee (noo-bee): the rare 1 in 1,000 who opened and read the terms before clicking "I agree."
Each day, Knewbee shows you 5 real lines of fine print from real companies' Terms of Service and Privacy Policies, rewritten as plain-English questions. You guess which company said it, see the exact words, and say how you feel about it.
The "1 in 1,000" comes from Yannis Bakos, Florencia Marotta-Wurgler and David R. Trossen, "Does Anyone Read the Fine Print? Consumer Attention to Standard-Form Contracts", Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 43, no. 1 (2014): in their study of software shoppers, only one or two in a thousand accessed a product's end-user license agreement, and those who did read little of it.
The name: "knew" (what you wish you knew before you agreed) + "newbie" (everyone is a beginner at fine print) + "bee" (a daily game, like a spelling bee).
How we count reading time
Reading time adds up the words in the current Terms of Service and Privacy Policy documents we have on file for the day's 5 companies (across their app, website, and portal, where published), divided by 238 words per minute — the average adult silent-reading rate for non-fiction in Marc Brysbaert, "How many words do we read per minute?", Journal of Memory and Language 109 (2019).
FAQ
Where do the quotes come from? From the companies' own published Terms of Service and Privacy Policies. Every quote is checked word for word against the stored document before it can appear.
Do I need an account? No. No sign-up, no email, no name.
How do streaks work? A day counts when you finish all 5 questions. Streaks are per browser: if you clear site data or switch devices, the streak resets.
Privacy
Knewbee has no accounts and collects no name, email, or phone number. Your browser gets a random anonymous ID (Firebase Anonymous Authentication). It is used for: your streak, one guess and one reaction per question, your daily Ask limit, and connecting a share link you created to visits on it. Your theme choice and a copy of your streak are stored in your browser's localStorage. There are no third-party ad or analytics trackers. Company logos are loaded from Logo.dev, which serves the image request like any web image.