

Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws. - tsellon
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/11/evil-social-networks.html

======
shrikant
I haven't looked too hard at too many privacy policies, but this seems fairly
boilerplate to me. I'd suppose if you compare this to [say] Twitter's privacy
policy, it would end up reading pretty much the same.

They also say (in "Profile Settings"):

> _Klout only analyzes public data or data that we are given explicit access
> to. We never share your private information with any third party or brand
> and you can control the information that we make available on your Klout
> profile page._

The full sentence from Klout's privacy policy (which cstross 'edited' out to
make his point) reads:

> _Service Providers. We engage certain trusted third parties to perform
> functions and provide services to us, including, without limitation, hosting
> and maintenance, customer relationship, database storage and management, and
> direct marketing campaigns._

I believe this lets them off the hook for storing/using your PII with service
providers like AWS, Rackspace, Salesforce and Mailchimp/CampaignMonitor.

Disclaimer: not affiliated with Klout in any way except as a user.

 _EDIT_ : Yeap, from Twitter's privacy policy:

> _Twitter may use both session cookies and persistent cookies to better
> understand how you interact with our Services, to monitor aggregate usage by
> our users and web traffic routing on our Services, and to improve our
> Services._

> _We engage certain trusted third parties to perform functions and provide
> services to us. We may share your personal information with these third
> parties, but only to the extent necessary to perform these functions and
> provide such services, and only pursuant to obligations mirroring the
> protections of this privacy policy._

~~~
Confusion
I don't understand what you are arguing. If Twitter also break UK law, they
are still both breaking UK law. Only Klout also actively creates an account
for you and attempts to collect information on every move you make.

~~~
shrikant
Admittedly, I went about it in a ham-handed manner (I blame the Monday), but
my core point is this: Klout is doing nothing differently evil with your data,
than any other social network. No laws are being broken because [Klout says]
no PII is being sold willy-nilly.

There's a comment over on the post that nails exactly what I'm trying to say,
and in a much better way: [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2011/11/evil-soc...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2011/11/evil-social-networks.html#comment-217380)

------
dalore
> Here in the civilized world we have a fundamental right to privacy.

I live in the UK. I thought it was quite funny that he tried to compare the
privacy policies by saying the UK is better. Now the UK might be better in
some regards but with the amount of CCTVs abound I still say they have
problems with privacy.

~~~
maximusprime
Please don't pedal this nonsense.

The UK has a large amount of privately owned and operated CCTV cameras. Most
are operated by private shop owners etc. They solve countless crimes every
day, and deter crime.

There's also CCTV put in place by local councils, to stop anti social behavior
and again, prevent crime.

You've been reading reddit too much I expect. There is no conspiracy, no
centralized CCTV program where the government spies on us all.

Unlike some countries I could mention, we have a pretty low crime rate. Some
of which is due to having various CCTV systems.

The UK does have a problem with speed cameras though. It's a way to generate
extra revenue from the population.

~~~
dspillett
> The UK does have a problem with speed cameras though. It's a way to generate
> extra revenue from the population.

Slipping off-topic, I can't stand that line. You break the law, you get fined.
Keep within the law, you don't get fined. Quite frankly if you want to hand
revenue to the government via speeding go ahead. But you don't like the law
campaign to have it changed, don't just ignore it then moan about being fined
for ignoring it.

My issue with speed cameras is their location. They are predominantly on high-
speed roads which with a few exceptions are not overly dangerous. I think we
should be concentrating on residential areas particularly near schools and
parks (the road past the school I used to live near is officially a 20mph
zone, but I don't think many people took it at less than 30 and there was no
camera or other such equipment there except on the few occasions when a
motorcycle-mounted cop sat near the blind-ish corner with his radar gun).

~~~
sp332
Some of the speed cameras are put within a few feet of a speed limit sign, so
you don't have time to adjust reasonably to the new speed and they'll ticket
you anyway.

------
alexchamberlain
I strongly wonder how many US firms understand EU data laws... Isn't there a
campaign against a small company called Facebook and their disregard for our
laws?

~~~
jasonlotito
And yet we complain loudly when a service isn't available outside the US.

~~~
alexchamberlain
Yes, but the UK laws aren't hard to implement - they are quite reasonable.
Firms should obide by them - it's good practice anyway.

------
CurtHagenlocher
Why does Klout in particular seem to piss off so many people? If the text he
cites from the Data Protection law were to be interpreted broadly enough to
make Klout illegal in the UK, wouldn't it also cover the information about you
that Google and Bing collect and process?

~~~
wmf
Klout was scoring people without asking them, leading to a lot of people
getting low scores (effectively being told "you suck at social media"). When
there was no opt-out, people felt like they were being cajoled into playing a
game that they don't want to play. (Similar concerns were raised about Get
Satisfaction.)

"there are many people who don’t wish to be a part of a non-regulated system,
and one that can (rightly or wrongly) be used as a third-party validator for
expertise."

[http://dannybrown.me/2011/10/25/a-letter-to-joe-fernandez-
of...](http://dannybrown.me/2011/10/25/a-letter-to-joe-fernandez-of-klout/)

"People are emotionally attached to their score. It is tied to their ego"

It seems mean to go around telling people they suck, especially when those
people never asked Klout's opinion. This is like Zynga-style dark
gamification.

"Just as an SAT score is used to judge students and a credit score is used to
judge financial standing, Fernandez hopes that the Klout score will become an
ingredient in job interviews."

So not only does Klout tell everyone that you suck, but they want to hurt your
career, too.

[http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/community/2011/11/03/klout-...](http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/community/2011/11/03/klout-
ceo-fernandez-responds-to-critics-gives-tips-and-talks-future/)

Counterpoint: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/26/nobody-gives-a-damn-
about-y...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/26/nobody-gives-a-damn-about-your-
klout-score/)

------
benregenspan
As far as I can tell, the claim of automatically creating accounts is 100%
false. So is that of automatically Tweeting or Facebook sharing.

If you sign in to Klout, you'll get fairly in-your-face pitches to invite
friends to it. _Should_ you choose to send such an invite, the friend you sent
it to would have to respond to this and manually OAuth their account.
Similarly, sharing an action taken on Klout to Facebook or Twitter is a manual
process. I don't remember seeing any "dark patterns"* at work at all here -
nothing is sent automatically, there's no sneaky small print or prefilled
checkbox, etc.

It seems the author is also confusing account creation with the service
requesting and storing public data from Twitter. Twitter's own privacy policy
(<https://twitter.com/privacy>) is clear re: content being available to search
engines and via API. If people do not want their Tweets to be available to
search engines and third-party sites that comply with Twitter's policies, they
can set their Twitter profiles to private, or can use a service that does not
have such an open ecosystem.

* <http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Home>

------
deepkut
How do I delete my Klout account? These guys are devious and I want out.

~~~
shrikant
"Profile Settings" > scroll to the bottom of the page, where there is a "If
you would like to delete your account, click here."

------
icebraining
But is Klout incorporated or hosted in the UK or EU? If not, how exactly do
they violate UK law? I mean, pornography is illegal in many countries, but
that doesn't mean a US pornographic website is illegal, even if it's available
to citizens of that country.

~~~
eftpotrm
And what about those online poker companies that are not based in the USA? Why
should they comply with USA law?

If Klout are collecting and storing data on UK individuals, they are subject
to UK data protecction law. The ease of enforcing that if they don't have a UK
operation is another matter, but they are still interacting with UK users in a
way which triggers UK rights under UK laws, with which UK courts could require
them to comply.

~~~
icebraining
_And what about those online poker companies that are not based in the USA?
Why should they comply with USA law?_

I don't know. When were they forced to?

~~~
barrkel
About when the US started arresting executives passing through US airports.

------
mark_l_watson
I agree with Charlie. Also, try "opting out" of Klout - good luck. Best I
could do was disable Klout app access to Twitter, etc. I regret ever signing
up with them.

------
peterzakin
"In the past I've fulminated about various social networking systems. The
basic gist is this: the utility of a social network to any given user is
proportional to the number of users it has"

This is a bit clumsy. If all of my friends are on a social network, it doesn't
much matter who else is on it. The utility of a social network is proportional
to the number of users I care about.

