Qualcomm
Information Technology
59
out of 100. Number 134 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Qualcomm does well
- Renewals 0 of 20. Nothing found.
- An arbitration opt-out exists at all — many peers offer none; it requires a personally signed letter mailed within 30 days.
- The privacy policy promises 30 days' online notice before material privacy changes and/or explicit consent where the law requires it — much better notice practice than the Terms of Use's instant-change rule. The cookie policy honors Global Privacy Control opt-out signals and provides a 'Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information' link. Liability limits are carved out for gross negligence and willful misconduct, and are explicitly inapplicable in New Jersey for punitive damages, loss of data, and property damage. No auto-renewal subscription traps were found in any document reviewed.
All disputes go to confidential binding individual arbitration (via JAMS); no class actions, no jury trial.
The fine print
6 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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All disputes go to confidential binding individual arbitration (via JAMS); no class actions, no jury trial. Before you can even start arbitration you must send a personally signed demand, give your full name/phone/email, and personally attend a video/phone settlement conference — and 'you and Qualcomm will not take any legal action' until that process is done.
YOU ARE GIVING UP THE RIGHT TO LITIGATE A DISPUTE IN COURT BEFORE A JUDGE OR JURY. You and Qualcomm agree that each of us may bring claims against the other only on an individual basis and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class or representative action or proceeding.
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An opt-out exists, but it's a physical mailed letter to San Diego, must be personally signed, and postmarked within 30 days. Miss that window and you're locked into arbitration forever.
If you are not already bound to an arbitration provision with Qualcomm... you can choose to reject this Agreement to Arbitrate by mailing us a written opt-out notice... The Opt-Out Notice must be postmarked no later than 30 days after the date you receive notice of this Agreement to Arbitrate. You must mail the Opt-Out Notice to the Notice Address... You must personally sign the Opt-Out Notice for it to be effective. This procedure is the only way you can opt out of the Agreement to Arbitrate.
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Qualcomm can rewrite the terms whenever it wants and they take effect instantly — no email, no banner, no notice. Simply visiting the site again after the change counts as you agreeing to it.
Qualcomm reserves the right to modify these Terms at any time. Any modifications will be published on the Site and will be effectively immediately. Continued use of the Platform after the effective date of any modifications constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.
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Qualcomm lets third-party ad companies and analytics firms track you across the web, and admits this can legally count as 'selling' your personal information. You can opt out via a footer link — but it's on by default.
Under applicable law, our use of cookies may constitute a 'sale' or 'sharing' of personal information for targeted advertising. ... To the extent legally permissible, we may allow third party advertising companies to serve our ads across the Internet. These companies use cookies to measure and improve the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns, with generic information about your visit to and interactions with our sites and other websites.
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Your Snapdragon-powered phone can send Qualcomm your location, your chip's serial number, which apps you have installed or running, your carrier, and even battery/thermal performance data — and Qualcomm buys additional personal data about you from data brokers, social networks, and public sources.
Through these software applications, we may collect location data, unique identifiers (such as a chipset serial number or international subscriber ID), data about the applications installed and/or running on the device, configuration data such as the make, model, and wireless carrier, the operating system and version data, software build data, and data about the performance of the device such as performance of the chipset, battery use, and thermal data. We may also obtain personal data from third party sources such as data brokers, social networks, other partners, or public sources.
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Anything you post on Qualcomm's developer forums, Discord, blogs, or support sites becomes theirs to use forever — irrevocably, worldwide, even sublicensed to others — and you can't take it back. Separately, their total liability to you for anything on the platform is capped at $100.
User grants to Qualcomm and its Affiliates the non-exclusive, royalty free, transferable, sub-licensable, perpetual, irrevocable, to the maximum extent allowed by applicable law, for the duration of intellectual property rights... right to use the Content published and/or updated on the Platform... throughout the world using any means and for any purpose.
Terms of Use, Section 6.1 (content license); Section 16.1 ($100 liability cap)
How these were found
The current English Privacy Policy page (qualcomm.com/site/privacy) timed out during fetch on Oct 1, 2026 and was not retried; data-sharing and retention findings rely on the official April 2021 French PDF of Qualcomm's Privacy Policy (effective May 20, 2021, from qualcomm.com), the current Cookie Policy (fetched live Oct 1, 2026), and qualcomm.com search-result snippets of the current English policy intro. The XTRA Service Privacy Policy clause was not fetched directly; it is quoted verbatim via Nitrokey's 2023 report, which states Qualcomm's own legal team confirmed the data collection was governed by that policy and shared the link. Nitrokey's claim that the XTRA traffic was sent over unencrypted HTTP is a third-party security finding, not Qualcomm's own statement; Qualcomm called the report inaccurate and said it collects only data permitted by law. The Terms of Use page displayed no last-updated date; 'score' reflects editorial judgment per the rubric.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.