From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun May 19 2002 - 23:44:50 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>
> You remember the trick that Yahoo played by adding new options and
> setting everybody checkboxes to "request" spam? Now Microsoft is doing
> the same thing with their HotMail accounts. There are new settings that
> have been added, and the default is that everybody "requests" that
> Microsoft sell their name and personal information to spammers. What's
> worse, Microsoft and Yahoo insist that these are not changes in their
> policy, because they were already selling the information all along
> without people knowing about it, even for people who requested they not
> share their information. Both companies interpreted such requests as
> restricting their sharing of the information for free with other
> customers, but they still reserved the right to sell the information to
> spammers.
>
So they say now. That is certainly not how their customers took
it. Why would I object to fellow customers having this
information and sending me unsolicited mail but not mind if all
the rest of the world has it? What a bogus excuse for abuse of
trust!
> I don't know what I think of the whole privacy/transparency issue with
> this. My main concern is not so much the information selling, but the
> fact that almost none of their customer know it is occurring. It seems
My concern is that our privacy is being invaded in just as real
a manner as if random strangers called up asking if we would
like to improve our sex lives or so hot dog and human action and
other such utter trash. Just because it is online and the cost
is much much lower to the sender doesn't make it any less of an
invasion of our space. The people who do this should be tracked
and rigorously prosecuted (yes we need to build some laws
first). The companies who sell our name, email, interests and
so on to these ne'er-do-wells should be charged with aiding and
abetting, defrauding their customers and violation of implicit
and explicit contracts. There is no ambiguity on this that I
see. This is wrong.
> obvious by the way companies sneak these rights into their privacy
> policies, and don't directly quote them or spell them out in the
> contract, that they know people wouldn't agree with such a contract if
> it were clear. It seems to violate some legal tenet somewhere if 99% of
This is fraud and shady sharp dealing. We should not put up
with it.
> their customers are not conscious of making these kinds of agreements.
> If they get virtually all of their business from people who don't know
> it, and virtually none from people who understand the contract,
> something seems wrong. There must be some legal limit to contracts
> being so vague and indirectly agreeing to further provisions not
> included therein, that are not readily available to the customer and can
> change without notice after the contract is signed. At some point, the
> courts have to step in and say that a contract must clearly spell out
> the agreement, and outside references or retroactive changes after the
> fact are not allowed.
>
Yes. This would help a lot.
- samantha
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