Woman Sues Blockbuster for Facebook Privacy Violations 133
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."
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.
Re:Blockbuster makes you waive that (Score:5, Informative)
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]:
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...Re:How does beacon know who you are? (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.
Anyone up for a boycott of all merchants who use Beacon?
Re:How does beacon know who you are? (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.
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 extensive privacy settings to lock out access to non-approved friends.
* Turn off FB's "social ads" feature.
* Use Firefox with Ad Blocker Plus enabled.
* Block suspicious or undesirable apps.
You can still enjoy these social web sites without advertisers or employers getting any useful, real information on you.
Re:Blockbuster makes you waive that (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 sort giving the employee more rights. It seems that they have to allow the rights and then negotiate them away. If they impose a policy or condition for employment that removes those rights, they can't really be enforced. Well, they can as long as you don't get a lawyer and fight it.
I think the case I was reading about had to do with some company who imposed flex time on hourly employees so that any time worked over 40 hours in one week was time off during the next week so they could get out of paying the mandated time and a half for overtime. Apparently the company has a forced overtime rule where they could hold you over your shift for 4 hours at their discretion or tell you your working on the weekends sometime during the work week. It would suck to work two 12 hour shifts and three 8 hour shifts in a week (8 hours of time and a half overtime) to loose half a days pay and get an extra day off the next week.