Out of Business, Clear May Sell Customer Data

narramissic writes "Earlier this week, the Clear airport security screening service ceased operations, leaving many to wonder what would become of the personal information, including credit card numbers, fingerprints, and iris scans, of Clear's customers. And now we know. The information could be sold to the provider of a similar service. Until then, Clear has erased PC hard drives at its airport screening kiosks and is wiping employee computers, but the information is retained on its central databases (managed by Lockheed Martin). Clear customer David Maynor, who is CTO with Errata Security in Atlanta, wants Clear to delete his information but that isn't happening, the company said in a note posted to its Web site Thursday. 'They had your social security information, credit information, where you lived, employment history, fingerprint information,' said Maynor. 'They should be the only ones who have access to that information.'"

Comments

Reverse Elitist Drivel

[SuperKendall]

As someone who stood in line and watched well off folks who could fork up the cash and fly by

Oh yeah, they were so much better off that you, having the fantastic cash reserves to be able to afford a whole $99 a year ($199 at the end) to have shorter security lines for frequent trips!

How much do you spend on your internet again? Oh but you say, I use that every day! Well what about people who had to fly every week...

Your post is nothing more than a case of reverse elitism, proclaiming how much better a man you are because you sucked it up and stood in a line. Well I say, foo on that - if there's a way to make security lines a somewhat quantifiable chunk of time let people take it who need it. The great thing about Clear was how non-elitist it was, anyone could afford to sign up if they traveled much and felt like it was worthwhile.

I was very close to signing up myself, and if another provider comes on line I probably will even though I don't own a single yacht or private island. In fact I am so poor I have but one next gen console instead of all three. Doesn't anyone value their time anymore? If you take even just ten trips a year by plane it seems well worthwhile to me to be able to show up an hour later because you know roughly how long security will take every time you go.

To keep up that air of self-satisfied smugness, the next time you go glance over at the first class/premier checkin line. Those people still get to go ahead of you only they do so by paying a few thousand dollars for a ticket, not the price of two video games a year. So you can still think how awesome you are because you are standing in line with the "real" people unlike Them.

It does annoy me they are selling the data (I don't think they should be allowed to transfer that without owner consent) but it wouldn't stop me for signing up with the next iteration. A service like this is needed for real world travelers.