“Privacy” Policies vs Comment Spam
While I certainly don’t blame him after everything he’s done to combat spam, Scot has gone to requiring registration in order to comment on his blog. As much as I like Scot and his blog, I was a little put-off by the “privacy” policy set forth by Six Apart on their TypeKey authentication service. Namely, they don’t have a problem with sharing your personal info with their partners:
• Six Apart does not rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies except to provide products or services you’ve requested, when we have your permission, or under the following circumstances:
â—¦ We provide the information to trusted partners who work on behalf of or with Six Apart under confidentiality agreements. These companies may use your personal information to help Six Apart communicate with you about offers from Six Apart and our marketing partners. However, these companies do not have any independent right to share this information.
It would be one thing if they enabled you to turn off this “rent/sell/share of personal information” under all circumstances, but they don’t. While I fully allow that chances are this fairly run-of-the-mill privacy policy will not ultimately yield in my inbox being drowned by a new source of spam and I just might be over-reacting, but I just don’t think that my wanting to comment on a friend’s blog should give any company license to “market” to me.
So if you’re reading this Scot, sorry man. Love ya, but I’m going to be part of your silent audience.
While I don’t speak for SixApart or have any inside info on exactly what that clause means, I do think it’s probably an over-reaction to let that stop you from signing up. It’s pretty clear that they’re *not* sharing the database with general advertisers. The way I interpret this is, e.g., if they work with a 3rd party mail distributor to tell their existing customers that MT4 is about to be released, then they obviously have to hand the database over to that trusted partner in order to complete the mailing. I really wouldn’t worry about it - SA have proven themselves to be good peeps.
Comment by Scot Hacker — 3/18/2005 @ 4:28 pm
Thanks for the follow-up Scot. You’re probably right (and I did note that they weren’t sharing their database), but I just don’t care for that exception clause - especially given the fact that I do not otherwise use SA products, so I don’t need (nor want) to hear from them. Why not just give me the option to opt-out of hearing from their “marketing partners” like so many other organizations allow you to do. Or, to be an even better sandbox neighbor, let me opt-in.
As for SA being good peeps, while I understand their need to transition their model of free to something otherwise, the way they handled the whole licensing move-over really put a bad taste in my mouth (as it did with a lot of people).
Don’t worry - I’ll keep reading and tracking-back.
Comment by Brian — 3/22/2005 @ 4:52 pm