FTC Warns Site Not To Sell Personal Data 120
itwbennett writes "The US Federal Trade Commission has warned two people associated with a now-defunct magazine and Web site for gay teens and young men that they would violate the privacy promises the publication made to subscribers by selling their personal information during a bankruptcy proceeding. The FTC, in a letter sent earlier this month, also suggested that the owners of XY Magazine and XY.com would be violating the privacy standards the company had in place before shutting down if they used the subscribers' personal information in a relaunch of the magazine or website. The personal information is listed as part of the debtor's estate in a New Jersey bankruptcy proceeding for Peter Ian Cummings, editor and founder of the magazine. Before the magazine's demise, many of the subscribers lived at home with parents."
Censorship Software would help protect Children (Score:4, Insightful)
Most teenagers shouldn't have anything to worry about because responsible parents will have programs like Cyber Patrol and CYBERsitter installed to prevent their children and teenagers from accessing these sexually oriented sites. It's funny because under the Australian Internet filter this type of situation wouldn't even be an issue.
[I'll spell this out early on here. I am not a Troll, just offering some political sarcasm, thank you very much. Remember, your Nanny loves you and only wants what's best for YOU].
Re:Yet the US gov got Birthday Club data (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah. Stop trying to invent a new /. meme. It's not even funny.
Re:Bad Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
The FTC's recommendation is unusual and surprising and I'd expect it to be ignored or fail if challenged in court.
It's going to be a pretty interesting storm if this fails if challenged in court, because it creates a semi-legal avenue for personal information harvesting, bypassing just about all privacy laws (barring perhaps things like HIPAA).
In slashdot terms:
Re:I'm from future (Score:5, Insightful)
Self-debasing humor aside, you have rather a significant difference between a site like Slashdot selling out, and a magazine for gay teens.
Most notably, paying for and receiving a physical magazine means the company has your name, CC info, and physical address; Slashdot has a dynamic IP address, a largely anonymous handle, a throwaway contact email address that likely filled with spam and died at least five years ago, and knows my default comment threshold.
Not to mention, society doesn't stigmatize geekdom (these days) quite the same way it does homosexuality. Although I find the Slashdot crowd far more tolerant of such issues than the general public, our "perverse love" of technology rarely gets us lynched.
Re:The morals of outing (Score:1, Insightful)
Given that a petition is an attempt to change the law, people who sign one should be prepared to stand behind it. If you'll pardon the expression.
Re:Bad Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's pretty typical for any and all contractual obligations over an asset to be tossed in a bankruptcy court."
However, it's not so simple when an asset held by the bankrupt company wasn't really theirs to sell in the first place. Suppose they had a fleet of cars which were leased. If they go bankrupt during the lease, they have to give the cars back, and cannot sell them.
In a sense, the personal information was leased to company; it was never theirs to sell and shouldn't become theirs to sell just because of bankruptcy.
Usage as intended by the persons providing it ? (Score:1, Insightful)
Such subscriber information is *not* just a list of NAW data. By its origin a quite important private piece of information is tagged to each-and-every of those peoples records : They are homosexual.
If-and-when the list is used for its *by the subscribers* intended purpose (to be able to send the magazine and subscription-fee invoices to their subscribers) there is no problem.
But if this list is *not* used for that purpose it should fall faul of the current rules regarding the aggregation of peoples data : NAW is allowed, anything more specific is, without the consent of the person, not.
If this is not strictly regulated it would be easy to create a full database with every detail you want by becoming a "partner" of any company who, by its function, implicitily tags private information to its NAW data-list.
Re:The morals of outing (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course you have to make your views public if you want to participate in a democracy. Everything but your vote should be public.
Especially political petitions. If you sign a petition, you are expressly making a public statement of your views on a subject. Otherwise, signatures on a petition could never be challenged.
Why would you sign a petition and then expect the fact that you signed a petition to be private?
Re:The morals of outing (Score:4, Insightful)
It's true that sometimes people do fear retribution for political actions, and justifiably so, but the only way to foster an open discourse, where social norms don't favor revenge or retribution, is to be open about one's beliefs and contribute to healthy debate.
Re:Bad Comparison (Score:1, Insightful)
However, it's not so simple when an asset held by the bankrupt company wasn't really theirs to sell in the first place. Suppose they had a fleet of cars which were leased. If they go bankrupt during the lease, they have to give the cars back, and cannot sell them.
Ok, but the company can (depending on the lease terms) sell the lease to someone else.
In a sense, the personal information was leased to company; it was never theirs to sell and shouldn't become theirs to sell just because of bankruptcy.
No. Personal information is data, it isn't subject to lease. Little bits of personal information aren't even subject to copyright.
The moral of the story is DON'T GIVE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION TO OTHERS. It's the only way to be sure that it won't be used against you.
Re:Think positively (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it a "promise" or a "contract?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad Comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The morals of outing (Score:3, Insightful)
Sadly you are mistaken. People do not reconsider beliefs often. In fact attempting to change deeply held convictions can cause cognitive dissonance since many other decisions have been based on that belief. In fact, people with deeply held beliefs often hold those beliefs even more strongly in the face of proof to the contrary. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/ [boston.com]
But that is beside the point. There is no petition here, this article is about the potential outing of a million gay teens. Which could result in eviction, abuse, and other forms of harm. The FTC made the right call I just wish that consumer protections were more broad. Rather than "you can't do this as it violates your privacy policy" I would prefer "you can not sell consumer information as it could do harm".
Imagine if facebook or myspace decided to mine and sell your data. "Ehh who cares, they already do." But studies suggest they can determine where you live, your sexuality, what you are interested in via your connections. So now even if you keep your data private they can probably figure out your birthday, orientation, former residences, etc. Now imagine if you are an actor or musician and have too many gay friends so they sell your info to a anti-gay group that starts protesting at your work and calling your family/friends/co-workers. You lose business partners, sponsorships, your family starts to wonder what you are hiding...
You can not reason with a mob, they have others reinforcing their opinion and peer pressure would prevent most people from backing down. Only a culture of tolerance and/or stronger consumer protection would make this less likely. Right now we have neither. We are sometimes inching towards more tolerance but then I see anti-gay, anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, anti-intellectual materials and I despair.
Re:The morals of outing (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is trying to prevent people from exercising their civil rights. They are, however, trying to prevent people from perverting an existing institution designed to build families.
So would you be in favour of prohibiting the marriage of heterosexual persons who do not plan on raising children?
Re:Bad Comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really, set up service provider A and client company B. B does all the public work while racking up a huge debt to A. B goes bankrupt and sells off private data in order to pay A. A makes a huge profit.