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Real Networks And More Privacy Concerns

Posted by Hemos on from the what-a-bunch-of-schmucks dept.

Arrogant-Bastard writes: "Lauren Weinstein's Privacy Forum Digest V09 #15 reports that RealNetworks' "Download Demon" forwards the details of any download (i.e. URLs, filenames) to RealNetworks. See The Digest for details. " Now, granted, this time the program, if you read the fine print, says that it will do this - but c'mon people - how many bone-headed moves do you have to make?

2 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Online Privacy Policies by Staciebeth · · Score: 5

    Download Demon may well claim that "this is all anonymous, we don't link names with activity, blah blah blah" but as we have seen in the past with DoubleClick (who just created a special privacy panel within their company to act as window dressing while addressing privacy issues) companies start out collecting 'anonymous' data and then later suddenly decide to link the data to names.

    I work in Marketing Research, where data collection is mostly what we do and so privacy issues, especially internet privacy, is "suddenly" a hot topic. MRA has a forum where any marketing research issue, including how you feel about your privacy, can be addressred. If you are interested in having some voice in how that data is used and collected, please post at www.mra-net.org/forum/. MRA sets a lot of marketing research industry standards which our members follow, and I'd rather privacy was a bigger concern, not a brief one or two lines buried in policies somewhere. We don't even have a privacy policy right now.

    You can keep marketing research from doing what other industries are doing.

    *shrug*

  2. It really should be illegal... by seldolivaw · · Score: 5
    They are creating a program for the express purpose of doing one thing: aiding downloads. It is bundled without mention with other Real software, and it installs itself without permission as the default file-download handler on your system. But what it does is provide RealNetworks with unprecedented access to the downloading habits of users; it's not software it's a trojan horse! Its most useful function is to real, and its method of inclusion is suspicious. They don't need that data to make anything for you more convenient -- it is entirely to aid their marketing program!

    They shouldn't be allowed to do that. I don't know how to stop them, but that shit should be illegal. Or at least force them to advertise functions which do not directly relate to the purpose you bought the software for: it's like buying a word processor with an undocumented feature which changes your networking settings, it's not what you bought it to do.