Rental Business Aaron's Admits Role In Spying On Customers

New submitter bhv writes "After firmly denying that it used software on its rent-to-own computers to spy on customers, including capturing passwords, sensitive financial information and images of private intimate moments, Atlanta-based Aaron's has owned up to the practice in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission."

Re:All I can say to that is...

[dforreal]

It serves a useful purpose, if you use it for a short term needs. When I was an undergraduate in upstate New York, the "College Housing" cartels charged more than double the market rate for furnished apartments with shorter-term leases. It made far more sense to rent an unfurnished apartment intended for the locals with a one year lease, and just pay the extra rent for the two months most of us weren't there in the summer. Since most 18-21 year olds don't own furniture, nor wanted to be responsible for moving / storing / dealing with it. we could annually rent a full living room set with a big television - no one was responsible for buying it, we didn't have to split up possessions between roommates at the end of the year, and splitting the cost of all of it between four guys for 8-10 months was reasonable. At the end of the academic term we would call up the rental company and have them pick it all up. Next fall, we'd get the latest and greatest for that year delivered and moved in. rinse and repeat.

Re:All I can say to that is...

[ShanghaiBill]

Working that job made me realize that schools *must* have a personal finances class which goes over budgeting, avoiding scams, and setting up an affordable household.

The public schools already teach this. My daughter is in high school, and she had the class last year. It is called "Life Skills". They learn to budget and invest. They write a resume, dress in business attire, and attend a mock job interview. They also learn to plan and cook meals using a budget and nutritional information. It is an elective class, but nearly everyone takes it (it is an easy A, plus you get to make and eat cookies).

The problem is that some people are just fundamentally stupid and irresponsible. No amount of education is going to fix that. The main problem is that these people can vote, so their irresponsibility is inflicted on all of us. If you run up twice your disposable income in credit card debt to pay for useless bling, then why shouldn't the government do the same?

Re:All I can say to that is...

[dforreal]

The whole point of not buying the furniture was to avoid the mess of having to donate/sell/move/divide/store it at the end of an academic year; the whole "who gets what" situation, since roommates usually changed from year to year (Someone graduates / gets sick of living with you etc). As a general rule the landlords would NOT renew leases from year to year once they realized you were actually a student since most of them also owned the aformentioned "Student Housing" where they could get quite the markup. I always managed to get a "locals" apartment initially by presenting an ID with an in-town address and showing a paystub from the pharmaceutical company I worked for part time. Was it legal for them to discriminate in this way? Probably not. Was it widespread, yes. At the end of the day, It worked for the three years I needed to play the game while living there.