Remember Unrollme, the biz that helped you automatically ditch unwanted emails? Yeah, it was selling your data If you were one of the millions of people who signed up with Unrollme to cut down on spammy emails from outfits you once bought a product from, we have some bad news for you: it was storing and selling your data. On Tuesday, America's Federal Trade Commission finalized a settlement [PDF] with the New York City company, noting …
So, that's that. It’s business as usual, and Unrollme doesn’t have to pay a fine or even admit it wiped its feet on user trust. A win for everyone! ®
Well, technically, it didn't wipe it's feet on user trust, but rather the part of the body that the feet are ultimately connected to...
glad I never used that service.
I typoed, should have been 50 years ago ... I was specifically thinking about 1968, when IBM transferred it's Information Marketing Division to SBC ... Later, in the mid-late 1980s, a certain high-tech market payed for the placement of advertising into the MOTDs of a couple Silly Con Valley BBSes ... they were detecting connection speeds of 1200 or 2400 (or less) and offering cheap 9600 baud modems to those folks "still in the slow lane". The outcry was loud and instant, and they stopped the practice within a day or so and apologized for the "experiment".
It's all been downhill from there.
@JohnFen gets it,
If anybody actually trusts ANY company to keep your data private, including government institutions, then you are a fool. In my opinion it goes this way:
Private companies sell 80% of our data where the other 20% is stolen.
Government(s) in general sell 10% of our data and 90% of our data gets stolen due to Government incompetence.
I just bought a new smart TV (not because it was smart, but because it was a good deal, even for a basic TV), and I read the screens and screens of terms and agreements that came up for each part of using the TV (even getting it connect to the Internet so that it could get the enhanced epg had about 12 screens of user agreement).
And it was at pains to point out that all of the terms were GDPR compliant, and if it was found any clause wasn't. it would not invalidate the whole agreement, just the affected clause.
And it was wanting to track the use of the telly, the channels that were being watched (for the purposes of starting up at the same point it was turned off - all for YOUR benefit, of course), and any smart applications used, web sites visited, online videos watched etc.
This is endemic. We will now never stop this happening, even with GDPR (which just means that they have to tell you what they want the info for, and ensure that they don't do anything else). They will just publish a wide variety of reasons, in as fuzzy way as they can get away with, and even bury that 10's of pages down a user agreement they know people won't read. Thus they will be GDPR compliant, and still process your data ("you didn't read the agreement, and yet accepted it! It's not our fault, then")
And we will have to agree, or loose access to the streaming and online services that have already supplanted physical media for entertainment. They will ensure that some bit of service you really, really want is contained in an agreement that includes all the bits you don't.
I'm probably going to leave the TV off the network, but I'm sure that I'll not be able to use many of the basic features of the EPG and catchup services without the network being present.
Why is it that whenever I see EPG my brain parses it as Eggs Per Gram?
which just means that they have to tell you what they want the info for, and ensure that they don't do anything else
And they pass that same condition to their 3rd parties. Along with they and their 3rd parties must be able to provide all their data on you at your request, and you have a right to be forgotten. On pain of much fine.
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