
Ask HN: Is the outrage over Unroll.me selling Lyft receipts to Uber warranted? - pccampbell
Unroll.me is a popular inbox tool for unsubscribing to email newsletters. They monetize by selling your data through Slice Media (and don&#x27;t really talk about this on their marketing site). In Mike Isaac&#x27;s profile on Travis Kalanick of Uber, it was revealed Uber engineer&#x2F;growth folks bought this anonymized receipt data.<p>Original article: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;23&#x2F;technology&#x2F;travis-kalanick-pushes-uber-and-himself-to-the-precipice.html
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mankash666
Yes!! Nobody reads the fine print on the EULA. Companies are hiding behind
this to do things customers wouldn't otherwise allow. If unroll explicitly
stated their inbox scraping and data selling aspect as loudly as their
unsubscribe "USP", no one would use them

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pccampbell
I think I agree with you, but I'm not sure no one would use them. A lot of
folks use Mint/Personal Capital and I believe they disclose a lot more about
the data being the product for offers.

I'd be interested in slicing the outrage responses by age or tech
sophistication. After all, my parents are still uncomfortable putting their CC
in online. Just a different world now.

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username223
Yes. The CEO is "heartbroken" for being caught, but he should probably be
"pocketbook-broken" for it, since he apparently has no morals:
[http://blog.unroll.me/we-can-do-better/](http://blog.unroll.me/we-can-do-
better/) .

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Digory
Yes. I think it's fair to say Unroll.me wasn't being honest about data use.

The service was supposed to identify spammy e-mail by address or subject, and
file them away. It's part of the business model to screen e-mail addresses and
subject lines, I suppose. And I could understand them selling analytics on the
contents of rolled-up items -- Wal-Mart wants to know what Target is selling,
and demographics about those receiving offers, etc. You'd get some interesting
data about what offers actually get clicks, too.

But the NYT article says they're selling numerical data out of Lyft receipts.
That's not spam. At no point did they disclose they would troll through your
non-spam e-mail for words or numbers interesting to the highest bidder.

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pccampbell
On one hand this is similar to all kinds of financial institutions who sell
your data (which is why you'll get a bunch of credit card offers). It's a bit
better than those, because it at least appears like the emails/receipts are
anonymized.

On the other hand, this was hidden deep in the TOS and Privacy Policies,
whereas some extra disclosure probably would have helped the backlash they're
getting today.

I hate the phrase "if you're not paying, then you're the product", because
plenty of freemium models don't follow that narrative, but in this case it
seems crystal clear. I supposed we're just seeing how naive people can be with
their personal data (email inboxes).

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AznHisoka
If there is no outrage over SimilarWeb/Jumpshot buying Google Chrome browser
extensions and tracking every url (even https ones like banking sites) you
visit.. and selling that data, then why would anyone be outraged over this
specific scenario?

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willysheps
I didn't know Unroll.me was using inbox data for this, but I can't say that
I'm surprised. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

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pccampbell
Sure. If you examine the freemium model, you're either the product or you're
going to be sold too. Personally, if I'm getting value out of a product and
it's free, I'd rather be sold to than have my data sold in some manner.

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newsat13
All companies must have basic ethics. It's a given that nobody reads EULA,
privacy & terms documents. Given that, each company must take the
responsibility to explain to the customer what it knows will be objectionable.
For example, if Lyft sold me travel information to 3rd parties, I expect them
to tell me this up front and not hide this behind some legalese.

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joshdance
I think it is warranted in that it is surprise. They don't say "We will look
at your emails and sell the data."

I used Unroll.me I thought they just sold ads.

The original article about the sale doesn't talk about selling the data
[https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/24/rakuten-slice-buys-
unroll-...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/24/rakuten-slice-buys-unroll-me/)

