Companies Settle Student Data Case 9
shaunj writes "An article on ABC News is reporting that several companies who were accused of privacy violations from selling personal information of over 2 million high school students to credit card companies and marketers. Aparently the privacy policy stated that the information would only be shared with colleges and other academic institutions. The two companies may be find as much as $11,000 for each violation. Many other articles mentioned on Google News."
Over 2 million x $11,000 ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Over 2 million x $11,000 ? (Score:1)
If Dr. Evil wants One Hundred Billion dollars, they can easily pay Twenty Two Billion dollars.
Re:Over 2 million x $11,000 ? (Score:1)
The two companies may be find (sic) as much as $11,000 for each violation
after which HughsOnFirst asked:
Do they really plan on collecting $22,000,000,000 ?
Seriously, I doubt they'll ever "find" that much to collect from the fuckers' bank accounts...
Re:Over 2 million x $11,000 ? (Score:3, Insightful)
lots of classes (Score:3, Funny)
Fines aren't always the best method (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be much more productive, and effective, I think to force compaines to do public service work as part of their reperations. (Much like many indivudals are forced to do comunity service work.)
In this particular case, for instance, they would make reperations to the students by prehaps getting their names off all credit and other "junk" lists, further they'd be required to do a form of "comerical" community service such as being made to work towards protecting consumer privacy.
In situations like this, monatary fines don't really seem to make a dent in the problem. When certian rights, like privacy are violated by a company it should be made not just to pay, but to help foster a protection of those rights.
Course, that's just my thoughts. Not that I'd expect to see such a thing happen all that often. (If ever)
Community Service who? (Score:2)
Monatary damages work in some cases, where they're big enough that the get noticed by other companies, and hopefully that they make a certain impact on the reparating company as well. Also, it would help if the actual victims (in this case the students) received some benefit from these rulings, but I doubt they'll ever see the cash.
In this case there aren't reparations due unless the ruling is broken, but if this were to happen, it would be nice if the students saw some cash. For $11,000 or so I'd probably be willing to forgive having my name sent to a few spamming companies.
Story Misleading (Score:4, Informative)
The story says, "The two companies may be find [sic] as much as $11,000 for each violation," which could lead one to believe that they are being fined for the violations they already committed. The actual article makes it clear that this is not the case. They entered into a settlement agreement with the FTC and could be fined $11,000 for each violation of that agreement. There's no reason to believe they'll be fined unless they continue to commit violations.