Online Shopping Cart Company Fined For Selling User Data

from the and-the-users? dept

Many e-commerce websites use online shopping carts provided by third-party suppliers. This makes perfect sense. There's no need to reinvent the wheel -- especially if you're a fairly small retailer. However, one such shopping cart system then took the customer data from all of the customers across all the sites they served... and sold all the data to telemarketers and junk mailers, even if the users clearly checked a "do not bug me" option. The problem is that the "do not bug me" option only applied to the e-commerce sites. The shopping cart company claims they're entirely separate, and they own all the data used in their shopping carts. The fact that they own and can sell the data is then buried in a long agreement that no one would read. Most people obviously would have no idea that the shopping cart company was different and had different policies than the e-commerce sites. The FTC has fined the company $9,000 and made them promise to be more forthcoming about selling data. However, that doesn't help the approximately 1 million people who had their data sold to junk marketers.
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  1. identicon
    nonstupid, 10 Mar 2005 @ 12:27pm

    No Subject Given

    $9000, that's less than a slap on the hand. Class-action suit anyone? Because the real victims are the customers.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    nonuser, 10 Mar 2005 @ 2:32pm

    Re: No Subject Given

    Something's funny here. You don't sell one million proven marketing leads and get only $9000. Sounds like some money *may* have been passed under the table.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    thecaptain, 11 Mar 2005 @ 4:57am

    Re: No Subject Given

    Nothing's funny here, that's the NORMAL "big fine punishment" that companies get. WHY do you think stuff like this happpens repeatedly? Because its a formal business expense...

    Step 1: Do something unethical and illegal...make 20 million bucks
    Step 2: get caught, plea bargain or plead no contest...get fined 100 000 bucks
    Step 3: PROFIT!

    See how it works? Personally, I think people convicted of behavior like this should forfeit all assets, period.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Shrek, 27 Oct 2017 @ 1:40am

    lol

    lol

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Shrek 2, 27 Oct 2017 @ 1:46am

    Re: lol

    lololololololololololoolololol

    link to this | view in thread ]


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