Woman Sues Blockbuster for Facebook Privacy Violations

Chris Blanc writes "A Texas woman has sued Blockbuster over its activities relating to Facebook's Beacon tool. The movie rental service has been reporting user activity to Facebook since Beacon launched last November, which the plaintiff says is a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act."

Comments

Blockbuster makes you waive that

[Animats]

Blockbuster's user agreement includes a wavier of your rights under the Video Privacy Protection Act. That's why I don't shop there.

Re:Blockbuster makes you waive that

[ark1]

Just beacause it is in the contract does not mean it is legal.

Re:Blockbuster makes you waive that

[TheRedSeven]

Parent is not correct, at least according to the website:

From the privacy policy

Legal Notices--Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988. Blockbuster supports the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 and will use reasonable commercial efforts to require employee and business partner compliance with the Act.

Now, that's pretty vague, but if you take it at face value (HAH!), it would imply that they don't have you waive your rights under this law.

However, they do have some pretty crappy privacy when it comes to any comments you post to their website (ratings and such): From the TOS:

Content submitted to blockbuster.com (including your name) will not be confidential and may be published or disclosed in Blockbuster's sole discretion, without any compensation to you.

By submitting Content, you grant Blockbuster the right to use your submitted name in connection with your Content.

I may just be going back to Netflix...

Re:Blockbuster makes you waive that

[sumdumass]

There are limitations to what can and can't be done. Some contracts limit your free speech forbid you to run for public office while employed, demand arbitration instead of lawsuits, limit legal jurisdiction to some far away home office location where they already purchased the judges and so on.

I remember reading about a court case a while back where it said some things in contracts like that become null if it is universal a requirement for employment. This is especially true when there is a law of some sort giving the employee more rights. It seems that they have to allow the rights and then negotiate them away. If they impose a policy or condition for employment that removes those rights, they can't really be enforced. Well, they can as long as you don't get a lawyer and fight it.

I think the case I was reading about had to do with some company who imposed flex time on hourly employees so that any time worked over 40 hours in one week was time off during the next week so they could get out of paying the mandated time and a half for overtime. Apparently the company has a forced overtime rule where they could hold you over your shift for 4 hours at their discretion or tell you your working on the weekends sometime during the work week. It would suck to work two 12 hour shifts and three 8 hour shifts in a week (8 hours of time and a half overtime) to loose half a days pay and get an extra day off the next week.

From Blockbuster's TOS

[TheRedSeven]

Parent is not correct, at least according to the website:

From the privacy policy

Legal Notices Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988. Blockbuster supports the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 and will use reasonable commercial efforts to require employee and business partner compliance with the Act.

Now, that's pretty vague, but if you take it at face value (HAH!), it would imply that they don't have you waive your rights under this law.

However, they do have some pretty crappy privacy when it comes to any comments you post to their website (ratings and such): From the TOS :

Content submitted to blockbuster.com (including your name) will not be confidential and may be published or disclosed in Blockbuster's sole discretion, without any compensation to you. Blockbuster may, but is not obligated to, respond to any Content.

By submitting Content, you grant Blockbuster the right to use your submitted name in connection with your Content.

Re:How does beacon know who you are?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are signed in to your Facebook account, Beacon is running. If you then go to Blockbuster to do anything on their site, Beacon associates your FB account (the specific Abrahamo Lincolni that is you, and none of the other 39 Abe's on FB) with your Blockbuster account, and reports that association to Blockbuster.

If you didn't log out of FB before closing that tab, Beacon is (I'm pretty sure) still running, and will still do the same thing when you log into Blockbuster or any other Beacon merchant.

Anyone up for a boycott of all merchants who use Beacon?

Re:How does beacon know who you are?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's how:

Beacon is a cookie.

You log in to Facebook, cookie is placed. You later log out of Facebook, do other stuff on your computer.

Then, you log into Blockbuster.
Beacon stores info about what you do in your Blockbuster account (e.g., rented [movie]).

The next time you log into Facebook, Beacon tells Facebook the information it's stored.

And that's how it knows; no special input needed on the user's part.

Re:More problems...if you want them

[Anonymous Coward]

I am astonished how otherwise intelligent people never stop to think how easy it is to "anonymize" their Facebook accounts but still have their close friends recognize them. For example, when creating an account:

* Use a nickname instead of your real name.
* Use a disposable email account.
* Don't bother filling out info like, phone numbers, home address, gender, relationship details.
* Don't fill out any other sensitive info, or use fake, or humorous data only your friends would understand.
* Make use of FB's extensive privacy settings to lock out access to non-approved friends.
* Turn off FB's "social ads" feature.
* Use Firefox with Ad Blocker Plus enabled.
* Block suspicious or undesirable apps.

You can still enjoy these social web sites without advertisers or employers getting any useful, real information on you.