The last CEO cancelled that policy as their first act. So for some years, that data was not collected. I wonder what data they had to sell?

Anyway, this is a warning to all of us. No matter what promises that honest startup gives you, the minute they are sold (and most sell in the end) the new owners are free to do whatever they like with your 'private' information. In fact it will be hawked in the marketplace like a chicken.

> Anyway, this is a warning to all of us. No matter what promises that honest startup gives you, the minute they are sold (and most sell in the end) the new owners are free to do whatever they like with your 'private' information. In fact it will be hawked in the marketplace like a chicken.

Is that really the case in the US? In Germany, I don’t see why simply transferring ownership of the data should not also transfer ownership of the agreements bound to that data. If I agree to let company X use my data for purpose A under terms T and company Y buys company X, in my view company Y would still be bound to stick to terms T and purpose A. Otherwise any leaked/stolen and subsequently published personal data could be used by anyone for anything…

pretty much any agreement by major companies comes with a wonderful disclaimer of something like this:

We reserve the right to revise, amend, or modify this Agreement and any other policies and agreements at any time and in any manner. We may modify this Agreement by placing a notice of such modification on our website, and User's continued use of the Service following notice of such modification shall be deemed to be User's acceptance of any such modification. User agrees to check this on-line area regularly to determine whether this Agreement has been modified. If User does not agree to any modification of this Agreement, User must immediately stop using the Service.

So if you bought a battery and never visited a Radio Shack store or website again, you would not - in fact - have made any express or implied agreement to accept the modification, and the original agreement would apply.

This sounds like something an aggressive lawyer could have some fun with.

The ability of the company to modify the agreement without your approval or knowledge is written into the agreement. It basically does nothing at all from a legal perspective.

I would hesitate to call that an agreement then...

So would I. Basically all you're doing in 99% of these things is signing away any rights to have a say in what happens to your data.

If I had a duplicate me, it would be spending time campaigning for a change in exactly this type of disclaimer.

The default setting of anything like this should opt you out and seek re-confirmation.

volcanic erupts

Still if you actually stop using the service (aka not longer subscribing or logging in) that shouldn't grant them any more rights on data from the past.

However IANAL so I might be wrong here.

This clause would be invalid in Germany. It even could void the contract entirely making any use of the customer data illegal.

Changing contracts needs explicitly expressed consent here.

The US has a different notion of who owns personal data than Germany or Europe in general. In the US, the collector of your personal data owns it, more or less.

Notice that in this case, the FTC is attempting to use the court's approval of the sale of Radio Shack's assets in order to force restrictions on the use of the personal data. That's because they couldn't use virtually non-existent personal data protection laws.

its no so much what new owners want to do its that bankruptcy courts discharge more than debt, the discharge liability, prior agreements, and more.

Are US companies going to respect German laws?

No, which is why one should prefer not to have business relations with US companies.

Hard to avoid gmail though. Even if your email is with someone else roughly half of what one ends up sending goes to an @gmail address...

The data is still valuable as a point-in-time snapshot. Remember, marketers are as interested in your past as your present, because there's still value in knowing that you lived in California in 2004 and that you now live in Chicago.

And this is why privacy is dead: so long as there is a financial incentive to having this data, it will be bought and sold like any other commodity.

That raises an important question: why aren't those promises legally binding?

Where's the consideration (money changing hands). Its not a contract.

From

http://comingsoon.radioshack.com/privacy-policy/privacy.html

"If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If however, we are going to use users' personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify users by posting a notice on our web site for 30 days."

It appears they've done none of this; then again it amounts to accomplishing nothing other than a PR show, so not much has been lost.

Their policy doesn't seem to have considered in its design, "what if we go bankrupt fire everyone and someone else buys us".

I wonder how far back the records go. Could they give me a copy of my Dad's purchase receipt from 1980 for our TRS-80 model III? For 16K of 4116 dram for about $300 or whatever it was back in '81 or '82? On the other hand, given the decline of the company in recent years, if they only have records going back 5 years I probably don't even show up in them.

In the case of Radio Shack, you typically handed over information as part of a purchase, so money definitely changed hands. For startups following the model of "we'll give the product away for free and make it up in volume" it's less clear, but giving info in exchange for access to a service seems like it could be consideration.

Radio Shack made many legally binding contracts. They promised that they would pay back their creditors. The promised suppliers sales volume. Radio Shack is in bankruptcy and all those contracts are (or have been) torn up. It's not just a privacy contract that has been torn up.

And for all the wailing and nashing of teeth I can go down to Acxiom and get far more data about people than radio shack has.

Many promises are legally binding, see for example the notion of estoppel, so sue them.

Because Radio Shack no longer exists. No contract.

Radio Shack still existed in some form at the time of the sale. The assets which were sold were transferred from Radio Shack to the buyer. If Radio Shack had a binding contract that disallowed such a sale then the sale shouldn't be allowed.

Speculation. The quoted terms were just about what Radio Shack would do; were there any about not selling? Even so, the seller was likely a liquidator, not Radio Shack?

You just triggered my earliest Radio Shack memories of being annoyed at a company for asking for my personal information when making small purchases.

Radio Shack was definitely in the vanguard of data collection.

Indeed. They were the first company I ever gave a fake name to.

At least at my store, Johnny Cash made a LOT of battery purchases in 2001-2002. A close second was Jonny Cash and one employee used Jony Cash for women.

These occasions are never-miss for my alter egos to shine through and dazzle my interlocutors :)

This is very anecdotal, but I swear that the minute I gave my email address to Radio Shack, I started to receive heavy spam.

I bought one <$10 item. Once.

http://i.imgur.com/4ztWmxW.png

I got those, but I meant as in unrelated spam, viagra ads, etc.

This was a new email account I was trying out made for when I got asked what my email account is by retailers, and I swear that the spam started once I gave the address to them.