Sears.com: Join Our Community... So We Can Spy On Your Every Online Move
from the ouch dept
Rich Kulawiec writes in to let us know that Sears.com and Kmart.com (owned by Sears) have been inviting visitors to those sites to "join our community." However, rather than joining any actual community, what you appear to be doing is installing spyware that reports on your every move online. It's actually a trick to get you to install Comscore's tracking app. Comscore has been accused in the past of distributing spyware surreptitiously, which the company vehemently denies -- but it's hard to see how this is above board. It's certainly worse than Facebook's Beacon fiasco. What happens is that you are asked if you want to "join the community," and then, without clearly explaining what the software does, Comscore's tracking software is installed. After that, all of your online activities -- including to "secure" sites like banking sites -- is sent directly to Comscore, despite Sears' website insisting that none of the data you share will go to anyone but Sears. As for the "community," it doesn't seem like there is one. The security researcher who signed up for the community says that once the software is installed, there's no obvious indicator that it's installed or running -- and he received no "communications" from the so-called community whatsoever. Basically, it sounds like it's just a trick to get you to install this tracking software while hoping you'll forget about it.
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Sucker
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Re: Sucker
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Woadan
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Haven't bought from Sears in over 20 years
I was flabbergasted to learn that a "warranty" that covered "materials and labor" did not actually cover LEAKS! Like just WTF is a roof supposed to DO, anyway? It cost me another $500 (to a different contractor) to fix their defective installation.
Prior to that time, I had actually bought most of my clothes, a large part of my household appliances, and all of my tools there. Those bastards will never get another dime out of me. If Sears is the ONLY place that sells a given item, I will do without.
I sure as Hell won't be subscribing to their malware. I'm not at all surprised that their "community" is infested with that sort of crap.
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Re: Haven't bought from Sears in over 20 years
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Re: Haven't bought from Sears in over 20 years
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Is this the definition...
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Sears...
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Sears 'community'
that is associated with Martha Stewart?
Like duh!
K-Mart chose a stock fraudster(?) fraudstress(?) as its icon.
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Re Sears 'community'
like jay leno said "here's a woman, a rare person these days, who is willing to cook and clean, and she's sent to prison?"
LOL!
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Fact check
Com'on Mike, stop being shrill about everything and actually focus on good reporting.
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Re: Fact check
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Re: Fact check
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Word of Mouth Marketing Hall of Shame
More here:
http://humanvoice.wordpress.com/2007/12/21/sears-kmart-want-to-spy-on-you-womma-hall-of-s hame/
TO'B
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Spyware and Doubleclick
I worked for Vendor management who were responsible for ensuring the software vendors that built this product for Worldcom did it right. I was given the task of directing the development vendor to install "web tags" which Doubleclick needed to track site movement. In my research, I learned that these web tags were really web bugs or things known as clear-dot gif's. Their purpose in life is to report to the mother ship (Doubleclick) what parts of the page were developing and what things customers were looking at.
I told management about this and they said do it anyway. I told them that our technically savvy customers would react negatively to the fact that we were spying on them yet our own privacy policy stated we would be providing no one any information about the customers surfing habits.
I reported this on a conference call with about 200 people on board and was subsequently told by management to shut my dinosaur (COBOL) mouth and do what I was told. Soon, I was gone. Soon after that, Worldcom folded due to pressure from the Government over their overstated incomes. Subsequently, Worldcom overcame Enron as the poster child for Sarbanes-Oxley legislation that many of you are familiar with.
I've been fighting (and removing) spyware ever since.
Seriously-Cameapart (Sears/Kmart) are simply doing what most Americans allow whenever they click on the swinging monkey or play golf or any of the other play-games-for-free on the internet schmemes.
As soon as Americans take resonsibility for their web surfing habits and stop thinking the web is like their car (only need the brakes and the gas pedal), they will be better off.
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The policy
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Internet usage information: Once you install our application, it monitors all of the Internet behavior that occurs on the computer on which you install the application, including both your normal web browsing and the activity that you undertake during secure sessions, such as filling a shopping basket, completing an application form or checking your online accounts, which may include personal financial or health information. We may use the information that we monitor, such as name and address, for the purpose of better understanding your household demographics; however we make commercially viable efforts to automatically filter confidential personally identifiable information such as UserID, password, credit card numbers, and account numbers. Inadvertently, we may collect such information about our panelists; and when this happens, we make commercially viable efforts to purge our database of such information.
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The Policy...
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want to know more about c,c++,c#,java ,oracle
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Sears
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