Motorola's Getting To Know You

LordNimon was the first to write with "ZDNet has an article on how Motorola is demanding all of the private consumer data from each of its dealers, or the dealer will no longer be able to sell Motorola products. The article is unusually thorough for ZDNet. It includes comments from big Motorola customers who consider this data to be confidential and are furious over the plan. It also mentions that Motorola refuses to comment on the privacy aspect of the plan, or even acknowledge that there's anything wrong with it!" A very thorough look at behind-the-scenes marketing forces.

Comments

Re:What's the problem?

[Emil Brink]

Read the article, perhaps? The thing is that Motorola is requiring dealers to send them their customer data. This makes it possible, of course, for Motorola to do direct "e-commerce" with these customers, thereby cutting the dealers out of the loop. Being a cheap bastard, I'm all for cutting stuff out of the loop between a manufacturer and myself, but this definitely strikes me as a profoundly disturbing way of doing things. If, like many of the deaqlers mentioned in the article, you spend 10+ years building up a customer database (and related actual relationships, I hope), it's not right for the original manufacturer to just come and demand that data! Note that Motorola threaten the dealers; saying they will cancel the dealership if the dealer fails to supply the required data. Also, it says in the article that Motorola will check the recieved data for accuracy. This is really, really sickening.

Re:What's the problem?

[MarsBar]

They are using an oligopolistic position to force their customers to comply to unfair terms against their wishes.

That's illegal, that's why it's wrong.

Illegal in Britain

[flatpack]

Where there are at least sensible laws against this kind of thing. Unfortunately in America where your very soul is up for sale on the "free" market, this can and will go ahead in the name of customer demographics and targetted advertising.

This is just another example of how freedom and the free market are totally incompatible. When you have a free market every aspect of your life is for sale, and without your permission or knowledge. And sane policies protecting people are voted down since they would interfere with the holy mission of "wealth creation" that America knows and loves.

Re:Illegal in Britain

[hey!]

Freedom and the free market are perfectly compatible. Freedom and ignorance are not. If corporations which pulled this sort of garbage found their consumer base evaporating it wouldn't happen.

Compatible? Sure. Perfectly compatible is overstating the case.

The tricky things in life aren't right versus wrong, but greater right versus lesser right and wrong versus more grievous wrong.

Once upon a time, you could walk into a book store and make a purchase and be pretty sure of a modicum of privacy. The book might be a smutty book, a politically subversive book, or a smutty and politically subversive book, but unless the clerk had a special reason to remember you and what you bought, you could count on a bit of anonymity. This was a good thing.

On the other hand, when companies track you, they do it to be competitive. Being more competitive, all things being equal, means they are more efficient. This is also a good thing.

So this is a case of good vs. good. Naturally, the people involved on the commerce side believe the good rendered by greater efficiency outweighs the loss of privacy. The aggregate good to them is so palpable, their lack of personal interest in any actual individual so obvious, and the immediate evil done to the consumer is so slight and abstract, that most people on the corporate end would never give it a second thought. They should, though.

I think there are three problems with the position that personal data disclosure in innocuous. The first is that the economic efficiency argument depends on a perfectly informed consumer with leisure to make perfectly rational decisions. However, we live in an age of data saturation, in which the problem with making informed decision is not limited access to data but sifting through too much irrelevant data. At best, in lieu of perfect information, we have a somewhat random sampling of data. In this environment, the marketers want to skew your decision in their favor by biasing the information you receive. In an economically perfect world, advertising and direct marketing would not exist. The argument that the consumer and vendor share an interest in this is pretty questionable.

The second problem is informed consent. Customers often don't know they are giving up economically valuable information when they sign up for a frequent buyer program, send in warranty information, or simply fill out the normal sales forms. Even where they are asked for consent for using the data, or if they are sophisticated enough to know that the information they divulge will be possibly be shared with third parties, they don't necessarily know how it will be used, how extensively it will be shared, and the possible effects of combining it with other bits of information that they may have leaked. On the other hand, the vendors know this quite well. So we have a situation where one party knows exactly what the economic value of the transaction is, and the other is in the dark and possibly may not even know a transaction is taking place. In short, they are pulling this sort of garbage and gettting away with it because people just don't know, and those that do don't know enough.

Third, simple net-present-value type calculations are invalid when applied to personally and societally strategic issues like data privacy. Remember the enterprising (and scurillous) reporter who tried to catch Robert Bork (a supreme court nominee and social critic) by obtaining his video rental history. While all it showed was a penchant for John Wayne, if he had checked out some smutty tapes, it would have done his reputation great damage, even though as a conservative social critic and scholar he may have had non-prurient reasons to do so.

Finally, we must rely upon the government to be reasonable counterweight to corporate interests. At the very least, they should make companies stick to promises of confidentiality and to make this promise binding upon creditors in bankruptcies.

Marketing is evil

[techsupersite.com]

They are unconcerned becase you are reaching Motorola's marketers...

Just goes to show you just how evil marketing as an institution is. Marketers don't care about being intrusive, they aren't concerned about privacy or convienience. Their perfect world is one where they can restrain you and force you to listen to their pitch. And they are trying harder and harder to achieve this, because the more foreceful marketing becomes (and it is far more aggressive than it was 10 years ago), the more resistant "consumers" become, and therefore the more foreceful and intrusive the marketers try to be.

One of the biggest problem with company websites, IMO, is that they let the marketers run them. Which is why you have to wade thru useless padlum to get to the product or support info, or driver you are looking for. I see this every day.

If I owned a Motorola product, like a phone or pager, etc, I'd be marching back to the dealer return the product for a refund, and demand that all info recorded by the dealer be returned.

If I were an ethical dealer, I'd find something else to sell. Plenty of other companies make the consumer products Motorola does. If this happens to any significant degree, management will rein in the marketers on this one.

Data Protection Act (UK)

[malkavian]

Ok, I just read the thread from the last person who mentioned the Data Protection Act in the UK.
They got pretty well mobbed by a load of "We're free because if everyone didn't want this to happen, then it wouldn't. You just have a repressive government." voices.
Well, a little bit of info.
The Data Protection Act doesn't stop a company from keeping records on you. It doesn't restrict the freedom of a company any way at all.
I should know, as I run a small company, and the Data Protection Act applies to me quite heavily.
Data that I hold must be available for a customer's perusal, should they so wish to see what information I hold about them. They must be told what kind of information I hold about them, and what uses I intend to put it to.
If I abuse the data about them, they have every right to request that they be removed from my database, or I risk being taken to court for abusing their rights to privacy and use of their information.
This, then, is no Governmental heavy handedness. In nearly all cases, the Government can't step in and wield this law and wave it about in your face to stymie a company.
It's about protecting each individual, and maintaining the rights of each person.
The methods mentioned in other threads (move everyone to a different provider) are frought with problems.
I don't know offhand if the radios are compatible across brands.. If they aren't, then there's a significant writeoff from starting from scratch.
If they are, then what about the end users who are comfortable with a brand they know, and feel safe with?
Overcoming this requires a huge section of the population to interrupt their day to day workings, which are more than complex enough, and deal with these new issues too.
If all big providers played this game, then, there would be more decisions to be made than there was time for a small company to consider them properly, thus stymying the company effectively.
I'll happily agree that an awful lot of laws out there are just pure crap. They're there to make lawyers rich, and do stomp all over common sense.
However, please don't knock a common sense law that actually does a lot of good when it appears!
Now, back to work for me after that little rant.

Malk

Dealing with Junkmail in the UK

[Kryptic Knight]

I have a simple but effective method to deal with junkmailers in the UK.

1. Just take their usually handily provided return addressed envelope
2. firmly attach it to a 'jiffy' (padded envelope) bag (free from your work stationary cupboard)
3. enclose one household BRICK and one fresh banana skin
4. take it to the post office and put it in the delivery area.

Since in the UK the Post Office is obliged to delivery post regardless of the content then the recipient gets a nice big brick and (by the time it gets there) mouldy banana skin, both of which they have the priveledge of paying the huge excess postage for.

If you want you can enclose some helpful detail on why marketing is a Bad Thing.

Anyone have any comments? Its worked for me.

NB: the views of the poster may or may not be applicable in other countries... check with your postage organisation first.

In any case .. I don't advise doing this with items that have your name on them unless you'd like a personal response from the sender.

missing the details...

[Anonymous Coward]

folks, this isn't just about consumer goods (cell phones) that motorola sells to joe q. public. this is about two-way radio systems used by public safety, military, government and commercial organizations.

I worked for a motorola two-way dealer once (disclaimer: only for a short time). there are definitely customers who would not want their purchase data shared directly with motorola. for those of you that say that the dealers and customers can just deal with someone else...it's not that easy. you may have hardware from many different companies in your PC, but a two-way radio system with 25,000 units and 40 repeaters and relays *needs* to be consistent; if you need service for a part of that system, you can't *afford* to wait for people from three different companies to show up to fix it and bicker over whose stuff went belly up. (it's bad enough having to deal with the phone company when they're involved.)

add to that, the problem that 's radios and motorola's radios may not work together (RF, yes. Trunking systems? Maybe, but probably not) so you can't just start buying from someone else. it's not like buying a new cell phone, or a new ethernet card.

and if that's the case, and you're a 1,000 unit suburban police department, who needs to talk to the 50,000 unit urban police department radio system (made by motorola), what are you going to buy?

anyway...it's not my field; just wanted to point out that there's a different issue than just what you and I use.

US vs. the world

[w00ly_mammoth]

Different societies tolerate different levels of intrusion. This means not just privacy, but any kind of intrusion against the individual.

The problem is that it's not just a matter of corporation vs. individual. It's also the govt. vs individual. Individual privacy is against attack from all kinds of organized powerful entities, including BOTH the govt. and the corporation.

For instance, in Australia, mass DNA screening of an entire town was carried out to catch a criminal. This was viewed as generally acceptable (there is no bill of rights in australia). On the other hand, when Australian companies gather data, there is widespread media scrutiny and suspicion. In Australia, govt. regulation of public lives is considered acceptable (they have censors to control what people watch or read) but there's a very high level of caution regarding companies.

In the UK, there is generally a much higher rate of govt. intrusion in electronic communication, a level that would be unacceptable in the US. ISPs are also held responsible for content, even in newsgroups, after the Godfrey vs. Demon case. This means more monitoring of content, since the ISP is liable, and in general, a greater intrusion into individual communication.

In the US, govt. intrusion is generally viewed with great suspicion. The one exception is police attacks on certain sections of society (because the anti-crime sentiment is strong, so people are willing to tolerate the cops busting a few doors and shooting a few people if it's to reduce the crime rate). OTOH, corporate abuse of individual lives is considered acceptable, because people have been indoctrinated since birth that if companies do something, they should be allowed to do so since the market will regulate itself. In days past, this meant that US companies could use DDT (now banned), operate nuclear power plants more freely (now regulated), use asbestos (now banned), or sell banned chemicals like DDT to third world countries (still allowed - it's good for exports).

Generally, these things all depend on how much a society permits its individuals to be powerless against the govt. or companies. In the US, it's a difficult proposition, since companies have bought out both major candidates. But there's still a high rate of suspicion of intervention in individual privacy, which results in some degree of regulation. Contrary to what people think, even though corporations influence politicians, the vote still counts (because that's how the prez gets elected, go figure), so they still pay a lot of attention to what the public considers acceptable.

What the public considers acceptable is just a matter of indoctrination, culture, and trends. Guns are acceptable and a hot topic in the US, not even an issue in most of Europe or Australia. Police abuse is common in the US while technically illegal, whereas in EU/aust/NZ, the cops have more powers but the level of abuse is less (except against native tribes).

Communication, well...it's a whole new game, and the rules are being written. Who knows what will happen?

w/m

Re:They help

[NMerriam]

A tyrannistic government with B2 bombers, Apache helicopters and the most advanced army in the world? I think you are kidding yourselfs when it comes to the martial prowess of even millions of civilians in the face of coordinated oppression

Yeah, because they're gonna bomb individual people with a B2? Break into apartments to root people out with Apaches?

Gimme a break, if we learned anything from every war of the past few hundred years it's that having the "superior" army and equipment doesn't guarantee success, and usually leads to overconfidence when faced with a determined opposition capable of hiding in your own midst.

Our fancy bombers didn't do shit against the Vietnamese BECAUSE they didn't depend on infrastructure. We're prepared for a battle against another industrial state, where bombers do a great job of destroying manufacturing capability.

If your enemy is the guy down the street who runs the deli, but also happens to be an agent of the underground, fancy weapons aren't worth jack -- he's gonna jump your ass at the most inopportune moment. see: Vietnam; French Resistance in WW2, et al.

The palestinians don't have bombers, the israelis do: why are they still fighting? According to your logic, the israelis should have won this battle years ago because they have far superior training and equipment. They just happen to be fighting fanatics who are willing to wage a war of attrition with human bodies, if need be: the same thing that happens most any time a population is on the defense...

I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.