

 FTC forces Sears, Kmart out of the spyware business - profquail
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/ftc-forces-sears-kmart-out-of-the-spyware-business.ars

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ujjwalg
"Under the settlement (PDF) with the FTC, Sears has now agreed to destroy all
data gained from the experiment and stop collecting data from any software
still running in the wild. In addition, if it wants to do any tracking in the
future, the company has committed to "clearly and prominently disclose the
types of data the software will monitor, record, or transmit. This disclosure
must be made prior to installation and separate from any user license
agreement. Sears must also disclose whether any of the data will be used by a
third party."

The thing that bothers me about this whole thing is that any company can do
whatever they want and in the end the worst that can happen is that they have
to destroy and not repeat it.

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pyre
What I want to know is:

1\. Why did they think that pulling data from participants' secure shopping
carts was a good idea?

2\. Why did they even need to look at participants' webmail information?

3\. Why did anyone at Sears/K-Mart think that this was a good idea _at all?_

Pulling all of that extra customer data _increases_ their business risk. If
that information was to leak somehow and damage a customer financially it
would be bad legally and publicity-wise for both companies. And let's face it,
K-Mart and Sears don't exactly need bad publicity at this point in the game.

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heycarsten
Even with all that data, they still suck at marketing.

