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Woman Sues Blockbuster for Facebook Privacy Violations
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Apr 18, 2008 04:27 PM
from the looking-for-a-quick-buck dept.
from the looking-for-a-quick-buck dept.
Chris Blanc writes "A Texas woman has sued Blockbuster over its activities relating to Facebook's Beacon tool. The movie rental service has been reporting user activity to Facebook since Beacon launched last November, which the plaintiff says is a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act."
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'A Texas Woman'? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:'A Texas Woman'? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:'A Texas Woman'? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
"Censorship is always more offensive than that which is censored. Always."
Parent
Re:Easy (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a real problem with some links in some places. Especially when they are presented at a site that is somewhat "work/family safe" oriented. I say safe orented because it is well known that people surf this site at work or in front of the kids. Purposely hiding the true origin of a link to trick people into viewing it is about as stupid as it can get.
And no, it isn't censorship to delete a link that is fed through a proxy in order to obfuscate the origin so that people who wouldn't otherwise click on it could be tricked into doing so. If the point was to post a link to something, then the link to it would be posted and not bounced from a assumed safe domian. In case your wondering, http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGkwkgCAlIK5YAl_5XNyoA/SIG=1hr6qq1f/EXP=1208637856/**http%3A//slashblog.notlong.com/ [yahoo.com] is the same as going to http://.slashblog.notlong.com/ [notlong.com]
And yes, I purposely broke both links. The first one can be followed and anyone with half a brain can fix the other after opening it. It you have doubts, you can go up and click on the original to verify.
Parent
More and more problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Apart from not wanting people such as potential employers to gain access to profiles that are by default made openly accessible, security vulnerabilities [publishing2.com] are particularly worrying, given the fact that social networking accounts often contain detailed personal information in context (i.e. not just a name, but a name connected to a university, email account, other people, images etc.) Add to that advertising schemes that intentionally deliver users' data to third-parties, and you have a dangerous mix, especially considering the average user's lack of awareness regarding safe-guarding personal data [bbc.co.uk].
Re:More and more problems (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, Facebook has access to my information, but I don't see why third party developers have to have it. I also don't put much information on there. I just have to assume that any information in my profile is going to be available to anyone, even if I put up restrictions and limitations, so I'm careful what I put up there.
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Re:More and more problems (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. My face book is under my real name, with real information. I don't put anything on it that I wouldn't want my professors/bosses to see (because they're on my friends list!), which pretty much means anything I wouldn't want the entire world to see.
I have blogs and accounts on other sites that are less connected to my IRL identity. Sure, people who know me could probably figure out it was me, but my name is not on them, nor is any identify information like what college I went to or what year I graduated from high school. I can be a little more free, but I'm still reasonably careful because I know that if ANYONE can connect that to the real me, they can tell others.
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On another note, it would be no different then asking them what type of person they were. Sort of like with a personal
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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I'm afraid social networking sites are here to stay, unfortunately. I agree with a lot of people here that at least currently they are insecure and have few if any redeeming qualities. However, an entire generation or two is growing up using them. It's going to be a hard habit to break. Maybe the fad part will wear off some but they are probably here to stay.
Re:More problems...if you want them (Score:3, Informative)
* Use a nickname instead of your real name.
* Use a disposable email account.
* Don't bother filling out info like, phone numbers, home address, gender, relationship details.
* Don't fill out any other sensitive info, or use fake, or humorous data only your friends would understand.
* Make use of FB's
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I concur - and it doesn't help that I haven't had much desire to do any social networking lately, save for a quick check-in if I was expecting something. I cleared my Facebook account of most information and limited my applications to a handful (photos, events, the stuff that isn't so invasive) and tightened my privacy. There were a lot of changes to what was public and how public that I missed in my absence.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Less than a month ago I signed up for Blockbuster Online, which I've tried before and liked. Suddenly I'm getting all this Facebook spam from blockbuster asking me to approve their request to tell the world every single movie I'm renting.
I didn't click any check box giving Blockbuster permission to access any of my Facebook information. Not only that, but I had to go to the Blockbuster website and find out HOW t
Blockbuster makes you waive that (Score:5, Informative)
Blockbuster's user agreement includes a wavier of your rights under the Video Privacy Protection Act. That's why I don't shop there.
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Re:Blockbuster makes you waive that (Score:5, Informative)
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Government can and does legislate power to the people... as well as taking it away.
And even if something is illegal across the board, you still have to go to court to argue it. I begin to wonder if American parents have to give their children a seperate allowance for laywers' fees.
Re:Blockbuster makes you waive that (Score:5, Interesting)
Blockbuster's user agreement includes a wavier of your rights under the Video Privacy Protection Act. That's why I don't shop there.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Uneven bargaining power, the reason they ask you to waive it in the first place (entirely to their benefit, against an a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I remember reading about a court case a while back where it said some things in contracts like that become null if it is universal a requirement for employment. This is especially true when there is a law of some sor
Re:Blockbuster makes you waive that (Score:5, Informative)
From the privacy policy [blockbuster.com]
Now, that's pretty vague, but if you take it at face value (HAH!), it would imply that they don't have you waive your rights under this law.However, they do have some pretty crappy privacy when it comes to any comments you post to their website (ratings and such): From the TOS [blockbuster.com]:
I may just be going back to Netflix...Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes but it's illegal. (Score:5, Interesting)
In otherwords, video rental records have a protected status that is federally recognized. it's not the same as most other information about you. it might even be more protected than your credit history!
Now this is a civil suit ($$$) not a prosecution, so that law is only out there saying what the standard of conduct expected of blockbuster is and is not a direct factor in the trial. I would guess that block busters agreements reasonably allow them to share your data with 3rd party business affiliates or for purposes of debt collection. However, I think the expectation is that your records are not public records.
Facebook might be the loosely defined bussiness affiliate, but most people would probably say it's public. And you did not really intend to direct them to share your borrowing records, nor at the time you agreed with facebook to share certain data could you have anticipated that blockbuster would become a bussiness affiliate. They really needed to negotiate that with you.
finally just because you sign a "wavier" does not mean you cannot sue. As I understand it, you can never sign away your right to sue. The wavier simply makes it hard to win.
I note that recently Netflix ran into a problem too. Their supposedly anonymized rental records used in their contest to improve movie selection turns out to have enough information content that clever googling can re-associate names with a large fraction of the people in the data base. (e.g. they mention movies they watched somewhere on the web and this can be correlated). Some group in texas actually did the reverse calculations and showed it worked.
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finally just because you sign a "wavier" does not mean you cannot sue. As I understand it, you can never sign away your right to sue. The wavier simply makes it hard to win.
I imagine the "waiver" you sign as part of your Blockbuster membership (assuming it's in there) would constitute the "express, written consent" required by the Video Privacy Protection Act.
Which would mean you've signed away your right to sue under that law.
What this really shows is that even opt-in laws can be easily bypassed by burying the opt-in amongst other small legal language and not making it a separate issue.
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I guess the question might be how obfuscated could the wording actually be before it isn't an informed consent and how would we define the "time disclosure is sought"? If it means some time befo
Welcome to the digital age (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you think all this credit card tracking and online accounts and frequent-buyers club bullshit is about?
It is all for companies to be able to direct their advertising more effectively. That is their incentive in providing these tools.
If you don't like this sort of intrusion into your lives, then why not take control of your own governance [metagovernment.org] and change things?
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FaceBook is evil. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FaceBook is evil. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A society where everyone pretty much knows whats going on with their friends/aquantences without all this victorian privacy bullshit sounds much more healthy.. and that's what's happening, slowly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
are you serious?
When I want privacy I'm not talking about people not seeing the legs of the dinner table.
I'm talking about people not being able to track:
how often I go to the bathroom
where I live
What movies I watch
how much gas is left in the tank of my car
how much gas I use driving to work
how much gas I use during the week
And it's not because those things are important.
It's because of powerful mathematical functions and formulas that can derive, from that, exactly where I hang out with friends, and wh
Re:FaceBook is evil. (Score:4, Insightful)
Furthermore, I don't really buy the idea that lack of privacy is something that is good for society. Your relationship with your customers is not the same as the one with your boss or coworkers or parents or friends or spouse or kids. It's not so much that I want to keep things secret so much as I want them to be presented in context, which is why we tend to only share private aspects of our life when we think someone knows us well enough to understand them. People will always be unduly influenced by first impressions - it's fundamental psychology, not culture - and so I think this compartmentalization of our personal lives will always be valuable to some extent.
Even if this generation becomes more tolerant, the previous generation is still going around for quite some time, and will have disproportionate control of politics and business for that time. Most of the benefits that result from this newfound lack of privacy will take a full generation to come to fruition, whereas the damage it causes can be felt now.
Finally, even if society becomes less judgmental in personal life, there will always be profit/power motive in using your information against you. I don't trust the government or the insurance companies to look the other way when given info they can use against me, and if history is any indication, governments and corporations will aways be untrustworthy.
So, I really don't think this Victorian judgment bullshit is going away anytime soon, and I'll keep my Victorian privacy till then thank-you-very-much
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Imagine the Repurcussions (Score:5, Insightful)
Example 1: Man buys book "How to Quit Your Job and get a Better Job for Dummies". His employer sees it on his profile and passes on the man for a job promotion, why promote someone who is looking to quit.
Example 1a: Same as above but man was buying the book for a friend unhappy with job. Man wanted his friend to find a job as enjoyable as his own.
Example 2: Man buys a book "Surviving AIDS" for a college project. His neighbors now think he has AIDS.
Example 2a: Man gets AIDS 10 years later. Denied for treatment by health insurance company as a pre-existing condition, based on his purchasing the book 10 years ago.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Example 1a: Buy the book with cash. Don't buy anything on credit/debit that you don't want traced back to you.
Example 2a: Who as AIDS (not just HIV, full AIDS) for over 10 years? I was always under the assumption that AIDS victims didn't last longer than 5 years.
Where the data stops (Score:2)
These fixes should relieve any concerns in Harris' lawsuit, right? Wrong. There is a difference between reporting the data to Facebook and publishing it to a user's news feed by default, and Blockbuster is still engaged in the former.
It seems that if your two accounts are linked, there's no way to stop Blockbuster from sending the data to Facebook; only your feed preferences keep it from popping up.
From Blockbuster's TOS (Score:4, Informative)
From the privacy policy [blockbuster.com]
Now, that's pretty vague, but if you take it at face value (HAH!), it would imply that they don't have you waive your rights under this law.However, they do have some pretty crappy privacy when it comes to any comments you post to their website (ratings and such): From the TOS [blockbuster.com]:
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How does beacon know who you are? (Score:2)
Or does the user have to manually link the two accounts together for beacon to work.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you didn't log out of FB before closing that tab, Beacon is (I'm pretty sure) still running, and will still do the same thing when you log into Blockbuster or any other Beacon merchant.
Anyon
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Beacon is a cookie.
You log in to Facebook, cookie is placed. You later log out of Facebook, do other stuff on your computer.
Then, you log into Blockbuster.
Beacon stores info about what you do in your Blockbuster account (e.g., rented [movie]).
The next time you log into Facebook, Beacon tells Facebook the information it's stored.
And that's how it knows; no special input needed on the user's part.
Being an idiot publically online is one thing, (Score:2)
Facebook Platform Application Terms (Score:2)