Spyware Company Sues Utah Over Anti-Spyware Law 503
cgibby98 writes "An earlier Slashdot article talks about how web businesses oppose Utah's new spyware law. A story in Tuesday's Deseret Morning News says that WhenU.com filed suit Monday against the state, its governor, and attorney general, trying to keep the law from going into effect next month. The lawsuit claims the law violates WhenU's constitutionally-protected right to advertise."
Constitutional rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the suit: "private enforcers, motivated by the act's draconian penalties and the promise of attorneys' fees, may still seek to sue WhenU for allegedly violating the act."
Well, yeah. That is just the point folks. I don't want spyware on my system. (one of the many reasons I use a Macintosh)
Thus, the act presents WhenU with the impossible choice of either foregoing constitutionally protected advertising and spending significant sums to comply with the act (thereby reducing the effectiveness of its business), without any guaranty that it will avoid liability in doing so, or else being subjected to millions of dollars of claims by private litigants."
No, actually. It is quite simple: Go out of business. Your business model is corrupt and unwanted by both consumers and legitimate businesses. We don't want you here and you can't force yourself on consumers that do not want you. That is the point of the law, the people have spoken and the legislators have listened and responded. And NO.....you don't have a constitutionally mandated right to invade my privacy. That is what it really comes down to.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean like when you're watching TV and from time to time advertisements are interjected into your programs? Oh wait, you don't pay for cable tv... WAIT A MINUTE!
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:3, Informative)
Let me introduce you to **Homonyms** (Score:3, Funny)
** cite
** sight
and
** site
see http://www.cooper.com/alan/homonym_list.html#cite
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's funny, explain to me how WhenU (WhenU Search, USave!) suddenly appeared on my friend's computer without any action on his part, and without any EULA being displayed. Actually, I'll tell you. As he told me "I was just reading an article online, and all of a sudden, this big window popped up, a bunch of new icons appeared on my desktop, and I have this new toolbar in Internet Explorer. I never clicked 'yes' to anything!"
The icons on his desktop (o, o.bat, and some executables whose names I forget) were part of a CoolWebSearch infestation. If you look here [mvps.org] you'll see that this installs by itself using a vulnerability in Internet Explorer. One of the packages it had downloaded was WhenU. Now I'm sure WhenU will say "This was done by an independant contractor. We had no knowledge of it!" but they still pay this "independant contractor" for the ad revenue. These guys have just as much right to forcefully install advertising software on my computer as I have to break into your house and paint "visit slashdot.org" on your wall. Which is to say, none.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:3, Insightful)
How is this fundamentally different from
But there the ads are inserted by the provider of the media
Both go OVER the content. This is not simply another commercial, this over-writes and blocks my view of the content.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:3, Interesting)
a better analogy for spyware and TV is that:
you are watching Spiderman on HBO, and suddenly someone hijacks the signal and starts to overlaying some commercial over the movie (pop-up) or changes the movie for some other program (browser hijack)
I hope that companies like that go under ASAP, that's what they deserve.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't states like Utah spend more time lobbying the Feds to repeal all of the laws which funnel taxpayer dollars into these corrupt startups? Why don't states like Utah spend more time repealing laws which protect companies like MS when they release products which have "exploit me and my user base" written all over them? It's always easier to pass more laws. America is going to legislate itself into a corner where everyone can be construed as doing something illegal at any time.
I hate spam and adware as much as the next honest citizen but it's very predictable the way the politicians and business owners run this dog and pony show and run off with our money year after year after year.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:4, Informative)
Going to?
There are already enough weird laws on the books to do that. In one way or another, whether you know it or now, we're all criminals under some law in some way. It's just a matter of whether it's worth the effort to prosecute us. Tomorrow morning, you could awaken to find that you've pissed off some bureaucrat somewhere and find a zillion small fine notices in your mailbox for stuff people do everyday without a thought.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you know, for example, that cohabitation is illegal in North Carolina? [canoe.ca]
The land of the free indeed... as long as you don't offend anybody making more money than you and do nothing against the religion of the ruling party (think there are two? check again).
Sunsets are pr377y... (Score:4, Insightful)
ya' mean we ain't there yet?
spit on the sidewalk? - 90 days...
climb a rock? - 180 days...
joke about "explosive flip-flops" in the air-port? - guantanimo bay...
get rid of these silly laws about how one can (or can't) wear their facial hair, in church, &c., while we're at it.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes it sucks that there's spam and spyware and adware out there. But there are other ways to solve this problem without giving government yet another quantum of totalitarian authority. The purpose of government isn't to solve your pet peeves.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think you could be more specific? You posted this general notion a couple different times, but I'm not aware of a single bit of legislation on the books entitled the "Corrupt Startup Protection Act."
Or am I going to get modded down for asking for clarification from a replier?
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
EULAs are out of freakin' control
We simply need to pass a law to remove the power of the EULA (because anyone in their right mind KNOWS FOR A FACT that a 58 page EULA is simply clicked through by the average user). NOBODY installs this software with any knowledge of what it really does.
Once the rights are back in the hands of the consumer, this will never be a problem. Oh, and I wish someone would excercise their LEGAL right to install a counter-measure in the same way that this scumware is installed.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
We simply need to pass a law to remove the power of the EULA
-----
You've got it right, but backwards.
We've got to REPEAL the laws which ensure the powers of the EULA.
Remember:
More laws = "bad"
Laws are diretly related to abuse
Fewer laws = "good"
There are fewer technical loopholes for abuses.
The rights always started in the hands of the consumers and the citizens. It was the act of passing more laws which handed those rights out to corporations and vaporous entities.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that politicians rely on complex laws to keep themselves in office and reduce the power of individuals that aren't part of the ingroup. But don't break out the tin-foil hats just yet--I'm not claimin a conspiracy, just good old-fashioned capitolism. That's right, people striving to make their business thrive. In this case, it's the gov't.
This misses the deeper issue though. Why in the world does this company (or any one else) feel that advertising is a constitutional "right". I am guessing that this is another one of those sorry misinterpretations of "freedom to speech" that we hear about. The sad truth is that freedom of speech was never meant to be guaranteed for companies, just individuals. There is a huge difference between my claims and the claims of any corporate entity.
If advertising was truly free speech, then the laws about truth in advertising wouldn't fly (after all, making us tell the truth restricts our ability to promote our product). As it is, we have two essentially conflicting ideas.
The real problem is that, as you said, we have far too many laws that only a few people know anything about.
One solution would be to make congressmen have no salary, and then they would have to work for a living. This would mean that they wouldn't have time to sit around and think of new laws. Any country with professional politicians is certain to have trouble.
Re:Free software? (Score:3, Insightful)
They aren't charging for it, so by your rules, they couldn't be held liable for it
-----
Is their startup backed by a government business loan? How about publicly traded stocks or bonds which come from public 401k funds? How about money that comes from loan sharks who get that money from public banking institutions? In any of those cases the WhenU software is _not_ free because the consumer paid to start the company.
The large majority of open software comes from private individuals writing the softwa
No competitors for Microsoft (Score:3, Funny)
There was a company called Apple. Ever hear of them? They went out of business in the early 1980s when the "Apple III" was a sales failure. I've heard of something called Linux, but as far as I know, no-one uses it outside of Finland. "Sun" is rumored to be developing something called OpenOffice, but this is not expected to be released until 2011.
Re:Free software? (Score:3, Insightful)
Boy, I'm glad liabilty doesn't work that way in other fields. Imagine..."You are at least 10% liable for the fact that you were shot - if you hadn't been standing in the way of that bullet you never would have been hit", or "My client can
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess is that will only happend after someone will insert a major virus/ddos software under "protection" of EULA and then sue Anti-Virus companies to prevent them to adding the virus to their definitions.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:3, Informative)
Or something
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny you should mention that. By coincidence, I just got off the phone not two minutes ago with a Telus Mobility [telus.com] customer service rep. You see, this afternoon I got a text message advertisement.
This was extremely disruptive! Here I'm in a meeting, and my bloody phone starts ringing as if our server was down, and it turned out to be a stupid ad.
I was quite angry at this, being offended that I'm paying Telus to advertise to me, so I called them. What they told me? The only way to not receive the ads is to block ALL text messaging.
This infuriates me some more. So now I'm back to the old-fashioned: write a snail-mail letter (which I'll do) complaining and indicating that they'll lose me as a customer if they continue this bullshit.
If I keep getting ads, I'm switching to Fido.
Re:Constitutional rights? (Score:3, Informative)
I picked up the phone and it asked if I wanted to make a free local phone call ( up to 5 minutes ), so I listened to the advertising for something going on in miami, then it connected to the number i wanted.
onepoint
More lies? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not familiar with WhenU's software, but I find this hard to believe. Can this statement be defined with the same style of deceit that seems to encompass adware companies? Anyone who knows of their spyware's habbit's please shed some light on this.
The law also curbs pop-up advertising on the Internet and calls for penalties of $10,000 per violation.
That's quite significant for a pop-up, don't you think? I mean I'm 100% against that kind of advertising, but $10000 seems incredibly steep.
Re:More lies? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More lies? (Score:3, Insightful)
I also doubt it applies to all "pop up ads" - it is more likely to apply to e.g. adult ads on unrelated sites, especially those added to IE by spyware.
There is some question about how a web server is supposed to detect what state the recipient is in, though.
Re:More lies? (Score:5, Informative)
It is hard to believe, 'cause it isn't true. WhenU installs are also a pain in the arse to remove.
My dad recently downloaded some desktop weather software (though I'm not sure why he wants to know the weather of his desktop), and this junk installed with it. I tried to duplicate the problem by installing on another machine, and was never informed that it [whenu] was installing. Luckily i tried it on a test VM, so I didn't get the pleasure of uninstalling twice.
Re:More lies? (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhhmmm.. There are many free sites that rely on the income generated from pop-up ads to function. This legislation would force those sites to close. Pop-ups pay on the order of $1-2 CPM. Normal banner ads are something like $0.05-$0.15 CPM now (for compariso
Re:More lies? (Score:3, Insightful)
First, we need to distinguish between "free" and "advertizing supported". Second, this isn't about website's own popups (which are bad enough), but about spyware-generated popups.
Google gets by without them. (In fact, every decent website gets by without them, since if you use pop-up ad
get to begging. (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides compared to what you would get sued for for sharing an MP3 or what the fine would be for DOSing the NY Times for 15 minutes, I consider that pretty reasonable.
Re:More lies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More lies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless the penalty is harsh enough to do real damage to the offender, it will simply be chalked up as a cost of doing business and the purpose of the penalty will effectively be nullified.
In that light, I would argue that $10K might be a little on the low side.
Re:More lies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, many adware/spyware companies commonly make use of user ignorance to install software. They'll flash a popup bearing a blue screen and windows-like cryptic warning message saying "your system is not optimized" or "your system is vulnerable to spyware" or "your clock is not accurate." The unwitting user is tricked into thinking it's a legitimate windows error, and therefore uses their best judgement to deal with the situation. Usually they'll click the "OK" button just as they do with real windows messages. Then they are presented with some cryptic EULA (which 99% of people don't read anyway), and the next thing they know, they are bombarded with popups and their machine runs at less than 10% it's original speed.
I'd wager one of the politicians in Utah became infected with spyware, and the personal, first-hand experience with the obvious problems it presented led to this fine piece of legislation. Yes, it seems steep, but if it were anything less, it wouldn't send a strong enough message to the lamers that write this crap to deter them from doing it.
Re:More lies? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More lies? (Score:3, Informative)
You've got to be kidding me?! Rights?! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that this is a great law, especially since it's basically one advertiser fighting against another advertiser, but still, enough with the constitutional rhetoric already, what we're talking about is people hijacking personal property, be it my computer or some other company's advertisements! Just give me a choice (even if it's buried in the EULA) and get on with it! Like it's that hard to throw in a window saying "Do you want to install this?"
Re:You've got to be kidding me?! Rights?! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, that's actually the easy part. The hard part is getting the window to show up AFTER the spyware's already been installed, and rigging it so that clicking "no" destroys the ability to uninstall it.
God dammit, I'd better shut up before some jackhole actually implements this...
Re:You've got to be kidding me?! Rights?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You've got to be kidding me?! Rights?! (Score:5, Funny)
I think you're onto something there... *cough*
Ahem, can someone give me a list of spyware companies' addresses? I need some physical space to place a little advertising...
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:this deserves a +1 Funny (Score:2)
Let me check (Score:5, Funny)
Congress shall enact no law which prevents a company, firm, organization or political party from annoying the living hell out of you with advertising. Firms may use technologies existing or not yet existing to "blast" consumers with advertisements or steal personal information.
Funny how I missed that earlier!
Re:Let me check (Score:3, Insightful)
The constitution guarantees you the right to free of speech, but not the right to be heard.
Re:Let me check (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me check (Score:3, Insightful)
yo.
Curious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Curious (Score:5, Insightful)
James
Re:Curious (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I have a pocket-sized version of the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution that I carry with me. I'm flipping through it right now to see what it has to say. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution says that Congress (at the Federal level) has the right to regulate Commerce among States. It doesn't mention what the State level can do, but it's an interesting precendent. Amendment 1 says our right to free speech can
The problem (Score:3, Informative)
In this case, a corporation is claiming free speech protections under the First Amendment...which is a loa
Re:Curious (Score:2)
I hope this doesn't set precedents for virusmakers (Score:5, Insightful)
The good side is that the problem is self healing. If they lose, no problem it's all good. If they win, spammers will take it too far and it will get repealed.
Re:I hope this doesn't set precedents for virusmak (Score:5, Insightful)
If they win, they will do things like the following scenario with a particularly unskilled computer user, we'll call him "Cloobie":
1.) Cloobie searches the web for a program to synchronize his computer's clock to a standard source.
2.) Cloobie gets stuck in a recursive pop-up asking for authorization to install a piece of software, once he gives up, and agrees he sees a 500 page EULA stating that the software has to right to do basically whatever it wants and he agrees to allow it.
3.) Cloobie is happy, he has found what he wanted.
4.) Cloobie happens to be on a company-owned computer and the software writes itself to all open shares, doing techniques like renaming other executable files and taking their names. The program silently installs on anyone's computer who runs the executables, and then the executable simply passes on to the real app they wanted to run.
End result is a virus that could technically be construed as legal, even if on shakey ground.
Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Before anyone tries to claim the first ammendment (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Before anyone tries to claim the first ammendme (Score:4, Informative)
The most notable case is Central Hudson Gas & Electric v Public Service Commission, which resulted in the Central Hundson test:
Lawmakers that are anti-spyware would likely consider it deceptive.
Protected right to advertise? (Score:5, Insightful)
They sell advertising. Advertising is legal. But in order to sell advertising, they have to own or otherwise pay for the right to use the medium that they use to advertise.
If you own a building with a billboard, you can sell that space.
If you provide some form of media (print, tv, movies, or internet), you can sell advertising.
This company and others like it, do not own your pc, they are not your ISP, and they are (probably?) not providing some form of service to you.
So what right do they have to advertise to you, or sell information from your PC, beyond the end user being stupid enough to agree to some liscence?
END COMMUNICATION
Re:Protected right to advertise? (Score:2)
You think people are mad now, just wait until they start showing up at people's doors to collect their firstborn children. What, you didn't read the 10 page license??
Re:Protected right to advertise? (Score:3, Funny)
Seems to me that's what these adware programs do - they sell advertising space that they have no right to by generating popups unrelated to the users browsing.
If They Want to Play The Constitutional Card... (Score:5, Interesting)
You see, if they want to make bogus charges, we can too.
P.S. IANACLBIDSAAHELN
(I am not a constitutional lawyer but i did stay at a Holiday Express Last Night)
"Right to privacy" is not mentioned in Const... (Score:3, Informative)
Rights Override (Score:2, Funny)
Ever.
Biggest computer hijackers around (Score:2, Informative)
Finally (Score:2)
Wah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Pay attention you. The people have spoken adn we don't want you.
49 states to go.
Out of Control (Score:2, Insightful)
Companies want to control what you download, they want to control w
Right to advertice? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yikes... I mean... what 'right' do they have to invide our privacy? To use bandwidth other people pay for to try to sell whatever junk they are peddling?
It reminds me of a sci-fi story I read a few years back, in which society was totaly taken over by capitalist forces... I can't recall much of the plot sadly, but I do recall one of the main characters beeing punished for owning a set of earplugs and therefore 'stealing' time form the companies by not listening to the non stop comercals on the radio.
It's free speech again, in a way. The company may have a right to say whatver they want, but I have a right not to listen... and I have the right to throw them out of my home, and my computer. And now an entire state in the US has, in a way, thrown them out of their home.
Whats next? A company claiming the right to paint ads in your livingroom?
New slogan... (Score:3, Funny)
What a PITA to find the bill text. (Score:5, Informative)
I just thought I'd share, so no one else has to waste their time looking for it. (I haven't read it yet, however)
Fighting fire with fire. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not All Laws are Good (or Effective) (Score:3, Insightful)
Point is, there are plenty of poorly written laws out there, put in place by good intended people to curb "bad" behavior, which have been turned on their heads, and end up doing just the opposite of what their authors thought they would do
Interstate Commerce?? (Score:3, Interesting)
If your wondering, no I have no love for any spy/malware company. I'm just seeking clarification.
constitutional right to advertise? (Score:2)
It seems that in today's world, everything is tied to the first amendment of the US Constitution - the right to free speech. While advertisers have the right to free speech, they certainly don't have the right to force me to fork over money in order for them to exercise that right. I pay for my bandwidth. I own my computer. Its my personal property. I paid for that stuff. Advertisers can't simply stick a billboard in
Millions of dollars wasted.... (Score:4, Interesting)
oh brother... (Score:3, Funny)
What about our constitutionally-protected right regarding invasion of our privacy?
It's absurd that these companies can legally install applications on everyones machines and data-mine information without ever getting the users permission. Utah has always been kind of the bastard step-child of the US - nothing good ever comes out of it (Mormans, SCO, etc), but I back them 100% on this one!
I'll believe they have that right (Score:2)
I swear to God, if there was a gene for this kind of legalistic stupidity I would violate my principles as a voting libertarian and constitution party supporter and call for a nation-wide eugenics program.
No Net Erosion of Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
constitutionally-protected right to advertise.
is the new constitutional right that will replace that tired old 4th amendment right not to be subject to unreasonable search and seizure.
The price was right and the powers that be figured they ought to give the people a new amendment in place of the old one (if anyone counts the total number will be the same) that was getting nullified by recent legislation.
Wait.
My mistake.
You do get an additional constitutional amendment protecting you from gay people calling themselves legally married.
Just don't say the constitution is being eroded, no sir.
We're getting more constitutional protections, not less.
Where do you find lawyers that argue this stuff? (Score:2, Insightful)
Too Bad (Score:4, Informative)
I was trying to see WhenU's side of the story by looking at . Unfortunately, when I tried to go there, my company popped up its standard "We can't let you see this web site" message. The blocking category? "Spyware". Apparenly the State of Utah is not the only group that classifies WhenU that way. [whenu.com]
Goes both ways (Score:4, Insightful)
My PC is not a billboard, your desk is not a toilet. OK?
John.
Pending U.S. Senate Bills (Score:5, Informative)
If WhenU.com [whenu.com] is unhappy about Utah law, I can only imagine how they will respond if either the proposed Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge (SPYBLOCK) Act [loc.gov] or the Controlling Invasive and Unauthorized Software Act [loc.gov] is passed and signed into law.
These bills have been covered by:
PC World [pcworld.com]
InfoWorld [infoworld.com]
ComputerWorld [infoworld.com], and
TechNewsWorld [technewsworld.com]
There are already limits (Score:5, Insightful)
- Posting monster billboards in residential neighbourhoods, even with the landwner's permission. (Except during elections)
- Phoning or ringing doorbells or standing in front of my house with a megaphone bellowing sales pitches at ungodly hours.
- Junk faxes
- Indecent, misleading or libellous ads, including those which appear to be regular traffic signs. (Road closed - detour through mall)
- Posting on private property without the owner's explicit permission.
I think this sort of thing is covered by the last case. If I send a 10 page flyer to your house that gives me permission to make unlimited use of your personal property unless you read the fine print on page 7 and mail it back to me within 10 days with the "NO" box ticked, no court in the land will accept this as implied permission. And it ought to be the case for spam/spyware as well.
Click-through agreements (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue seems not to be spyware, but not adequately warning users of what is being installed on their systems. It would seem to make more sense to pass legislation that requires standard, plainly and prominently shown notification of what habits a program tracks and what sort of advertising it does, shown on its own page before installation. A blanket ban seems a bit extreme.
On another note, spyware seems to invade my system even though I am pretty saavy and do all I can to avoid it. It would appear some companies take advantage of IE exploits to stick these things on my system, but I can't say for sure.
OK, you /. constitutional lawyers ... (Score:3, Funny)
... don't go all strict constructionist on me now!
The Right to Advertise is right in there, next to the Right to Private Abortions and the Right to Join The National Guard In Order To Bear Arms.
;)
fantastic (Score:4, Interesting)
Appropriate Punishment (Score:3, Funny)
I promote, as an appropriate punishment for spyware, the shoe-crapping. Specifically, persons found in violation are required temporarily to cede their shoes to the state, during which time the attorney general is required to take a crap inside of said shoes. Following this, the shoes are returned to the offender.
Spyware == Petty Theft? (Score:4, Insightful)
Could the spyware companies be shut down using anti-racketeer laws (assuming they are located in the US)?
what whenu is and does. (Score:3, Informative)
this site tells you what it does [spywareguide.com]
spybot and ad-aware both remove it if you got it on your PC
click here for spybotSD [spybot.info]
For Ad-Aware. [lavasoftusa.com]
Spyware (Score:4, Insightful)
This post may be understood as flamebait by those who do barely try to see things from my point of view, but I can brace myself up against that. The issue is, I do not really see where some peoples' complaints against major advertising companies lie, as it seems apparent to me that the softwares' privacy policy has always been available to the end-user. Out of curiosity, I visited WhenU's site [whenu.com] to verify whether or not there was truely a case of non-consent on the behalf of the user, and of breach of the user's privacy. WhenU's privacy policy [whenu.com] is freely available on their site, and for the lazy among you, these are basically the most important paragraphs:
So far, so "clean" -- WhenU.com informs the user of the information that is sent to WhenU.com, and also details which information is not used, and when the required information is sent. Although, my cynicism pushed me to download the SaveNow software just to check whether or not there were some strings attached with the software itself; on installation, I read the privacy statement which was completely identical.So, according to this privacy statement the user consents to installing the software and subsequently to have the said software make use of the user's bandwidth to send anonymous usage statistics to WhenU.com and download advertising banners corresponding to the profile built with the anonymous information. I hastedly repeated the small research for Claria software [claria.com] (formerly GATOR software) and the results are pretty much identical -- the user consents to installing the program and have it use bandwidth to send anonymous information to Internet servers. So the major desktop advertising comapnies are sadly pretty much right when the affirm that the user is consenting to their software using their computer to perform various tasks and activities. Now the question which is preponderant in my mind is: what am I doing wrong here? There must be a further reason for everyone complaining about a breach of privacy, further than the statements in the privacy policies then -- but if the information in the privacy policies is invalid, doesn't that make the activity of these companies illegal?
Anatomy of a privacy policy (Score:5, Insightful)
NOTE: It does NOT say the results of these decisions are not sent back to WhenU's servers. It merely states the "decisions regarding which ads to retrieve to an individual desktop are processed on the user's desktop". This reveals:
1. They are choosing to expend the user's processing/memory resources to make these decisions in lieu of their own network. That's more of a lets-waste-the-user's-resources-instead-of-our-ow
2. They are not explicitly saying they aren't collecting detailed info on the criteria used to make a decision; merely that the decision is being made locally. The words are twisted in such a way as to give the user the false impression that they are somehow protected when they are not.
3. They can at any time, elect to pull content from WhenU's servers instead of the localized database, which in effect sends the decision information to WhenU and worse, unnamed "third parties".
User privacy is also protected in the following manner:
1) Personally-identifiable information is NOT required in order to use the software and
All they say here is the info is "not required" - which is meaningless. It doesn't say they won't try to acquire personal information, which they obviously will.
WhenU.com does NOT know the identity of individual users of the software
1. This is a red herring. They can easily collect enough information to qualify the individual identity of the user, but they can claim that even with all this information, there is no guarantee [ever] of knowing whether the information is accurate, therefore they "do NOT know the identity".
The important thing to note here is, they are merely claiming they "do not know the identity"; they're not saying they "WILL not seek the identity", or "will not collect personally identifiable information". They will and they do, but if you ask them, they'll say, "Gosh, we really don't know if we could identify you based on the info we've collected..."
2) As the user surfs the Internet, URLS visited by the user (i.e. the user's "clickstream data") are NOT transmitted to WhenU.com or any third party server
This is a great example of the classic privacy policy snow-job. What they are leaving out is the three magic words which are implied: AT THIS TIME "URLs are not transmitted to WhenU.com". Because of the policy being subject to change at any time, this statement merely says right now they're not getting that info. It doesn't say they "will not ever" collect this information. Why not say that?
3) WhenU.com does NOT assemble personally-identifiable browsing profiles of users
4) WhenU.com does NOT assemble anonymous machine-identifiable browsing profiles of individual users
5) WhenU.com does NOT track which ads and offers are seen or clicked on by individual machines - analysis and tracking is done in the aggregate.
Again, more of the same. "Here's what we're doing RIGHT NOW" - it doesn't mean that tomorrow we won't be giving your personal info to every Herbalife distributor in North America, but right now we don't do that. Hooray! Yea, sign me up!
Cockroaches (Score:3, Funny)
What i want to do is write my own 50 page EULA and get some politician and the head of a spy-ware company to agree without reading it, then they will feel the wrath as i suddenly own them and their kids - hey if they want to dispute it fine, but that means their EULA is null and void too and i can sue them back!
No constitutional right to ads (Score:3, Interesting)
Consitutional right to advertise??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Consitutional right to advertise??? (Score:3, Informative)
You can read more about it here. [reclaimdemocracy.org]
Corporations cannot use 'bill of rights' (Score:5, Interesting)
Corporations should-not/cannot be given the same rights as citizens. Corporations cannot be held to equal responsibilities as citizens, nor can be punished to equal measurements to citizens. Corporations have much more resources available to utilize the legal and/or government systems to their own purposes. The people responsible for running of corporations are not held responsible nor punished as harshly when found guilty.
-1, Wrong... (Score:4, Interesting)
And for the most part, that is a good thing, not a bad one. Sure you can't discriminate based on race, but what if I could discriminate companies based on your employees race? And they deserve most of the basic rights like protection from illegal search and seizure, right to a trial and so on.
What has been held to a higher standard is commercial speech, otherwise they could use all sorts of false and deceptive marketing. Or well, comparing with the rest of the world, perhaps I should say political speech is held to an incredibly low standard.
In the US, you can state things that in most of Europe would be considered illegal racist speech (think of is as class action libel/slander) or illegal false or deceptive political speech, like Holocaust deniers. But then again the US has never had to deal with it quite like we have.
I can't wait until someone starts claiming 9/11 didn't happen, but was all staged by the US as an excuse to attack the Arab world or some such non-sense. Once you start proclaiming that as "fact", I think you might be in for a vacation in Guantanamo Bay quite soon...
Kjella
Companies in Utah (Score:3, Insightful)
Why doesn't generic anti-virus stop spyware, too? (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, so spyware is in a mostly different category than viruses, but doesn't it seem odd that the companies with the greatest experience in scanning computers looking for software haven't moved into the market dominated by smaller companies/freeware?
I think it would be a HUGE seller to corporations who lose of a ton of productivity to this crap. I know I'd push it in a heartbeat if it was available, as would others.
So why does McAfee or Norton do this? I know it's not a conspiracy -- but it really feels like one.
if they maintain the "right" to advertise... (Score:3, Funny)