Slashdot Mirror
FTC Warns Site Not To Sell Personal Data
itwbennett writes "The US Federal Trade Commission has warned two people associated with a now-defunct magazine and Web site for gay teens and young men that they would violate the privacy promises the publication made to subscribers by selling their personal information during a bankruptcy proceeding. The FTC, in a letter sent earlier this month, also suggested that the owners of XY Magazine and XY.com would be violating the privacy standards the company had in place before shutting down if they used the subscribers' personal information in a relaunch of the magazine or website. The personal information is listed as part of the debtor's estate in a New Jersey bankruptcy proceeding for Peter Ian Cummings, editor and founder of the magazine. Before the magazine's demise, many of the subscribers lived at home with parents."
Is that a stage name ;-)?
Funny how they cannot sell data, but the US Selective Service "ie draft" seemed to like buying and using data when they wanted it :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrell's_Ice_Cream_Parlour
The data an American ice cream parlor chain was used to warn young men to register for the draft before their 18th birthday in the early 1980's.
It was all a big Google (mistake) when exposed.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There were widespread demands in the left-wing part of politics that anyone who signed a petition to ban gay marriage should have their personal details published. They succeeded.
Now they want to protect gay people against being outed?
It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so called 'alternative sexuality', which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to paedophilia.
What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:
I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for secondary rim and cord in my arse. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.
Update the Second: It is also documented that Evil Sicko Gaymond is responsible for a nauseating piece of code called Fetchmail, which is obviously sinister sodomite slang for 'Felch Male' -- a disgusting practise. For those not in the know, 'felching' is the act performed by two perverts wherein one sucks their own post-coital ejaculate out of the other's rectum. In fact, it appears that the dirty Linux faggots set out to undermine the good Republican institution of e-mail, turning it into 'e-male.'
As far as Richard 'Master' Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following: 'I've been resistant to the pressure to conform in any circumstance,' he says. 'It's about being able to question conventional wisdom,' he asserts. 'I believe in love, but not monogamy,' he says plainly.
And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!
Speaking about 'flaming,' who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of corrupting the innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:
'I've got a rare kidney disease,' I told her. 'I have to go to the bathroom a lot. You can come with me if you want, but it takes a while. Is that okay with you? Do you want a note from my doctor?'
Is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, Jon? And letting the other boys touch it too?
We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as 'Slashdot's resident Gasbag.' Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux 'Sauce Code,' a 'Gasbag' is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, 'piss-pipe'), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and co
Most teenagers shouldn't have anything to worry about because responsible parents will have programs like Cyber Patrol and CYBERsitter installed to prevent their children and teenagers from accessing these sexually oriented sites. It's funny because under the Australian Internet filter this type of situation wouldn't even be an issue.
[I'll spell this out early on here. I am not a Troll, just offering some political sarcasm, thank you very much. Remember, your Nanny loves you and only wants what's best for YOU].
And this same news was posted expect for the fact that the magazine was substituted with website. "Before the website's demise, many of the subscribers lived at home with parents." -Anonymouse
Even the submission says it's because the company in question had privacy policies in place prior to going bankrupt. They would be violatinig said policies if they give away or sell the data. Listing it as 'assets' in bankrupcy court when they weren't supposed to sell it in the first place was a mistake by them.
The Selective Service has no such polcies.
Must. Resist. Bad. Joke!!
My name is G.Oatse, and I have the worlds largest anus.
Sent from my iAss.
Thanks for this.
http://www.HotelFlightCar.com
I'll be buggered if I enter my personal details on a gay teens website!
It seems that you've put a great amount of time into your article and I want a lot more of these on the internet these days. Well, anyways... it certainly was very informative for me. http://online-insurance-quotes.org/
"Before the magazine's demise, many of the subscribers lived at home with parents."
And this changed how exactly after the bankrupcy of the magazine?
Maybe a bankrupcy of slashdot would be a good thing for the readers too ...
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
My understanding was that the US doesn't have anything like the UK Data Protection Act so the company wouldn't actually be doing anything illegal.
Are these promises worth anything? Would it even constitute a breach of contract, i.e. be grounds for a civil action?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Patch like you have never patched before!!
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
There is nothing preventing a company from changing its privacy policy after it has obtained your private information. Hell, there's no law requiring that they even adhere to their own privacy policy.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
where da hos at? oh... apparently not in this magazine.
Well, think positively. As more and more people grow up with CS and clones and other online games, soon we'll have a whole generation who thinks "gay" means "got more than one kill with a sniper rifle" or "won the roll on a piece of loot you wanted too".
And for that matter than "I fucked your mom" is the new "good morning, sir. How do you do?" I can imagine a business meeting in 2020 going something like:
CEO: "And now Mr Stevens the VIP of marketing will present the results from the latest market poll."
Stevens: "I fucked your moms, ladies and gentlemen."
Chorus: "Your mom's fat."
Stevens: "As you can see on this graph, after our latest PR campaign, our brand recognition has risen by almost 20% and the sales by nearly 10%."
PHB from the audience: "Dude, you're gay."
Stevens: "Thank you."
At any rate, they'll probably think that having been subscribed to a gay magazine is like subscribing to some gaming tricks site ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I can't recall any other case where government forced enforcement of privacy policy on third parties like bankruptcy courts. Even here, it is not clear if FTC is threatening action or just bluffing.
I remember the case of a hospital that stored medical records in a warehouse. They stopped paying rent and the landlord sold the file cabinets including contents to help recover his losses. The cabinets, folders and paper are physical property and property laws govern them. The information on the papers had no legal standing at all.
Even HIPPA laws do not apply to parties who are not heath care providers or their agents but who have possesion of patient data nevertheless.
Current intellectual property law is distinct from ordinary property law. Considering the fact that data possession and data processing are the major source of wealth in the 21st century, we badly need a better legal foundation for information. Traditional property rights, intellectual property rights and contract law all come up short.
Such subscriber information is *not* just a list of NAW data. By its origin a quite important private piece of information is tagged to each-and-every of those peoples records : They are homosexual.
If-and-when the list is used for its *by the subscribers* intended purpose (to be able to send the magazine and subscription-fee invoices to their subscribers) there is no problem.
But if this list is *not* used for that purpose it should fall faul of the current rules regarding the aggregation of peoples data : NAW is allowed, anything more specific is, without the consent of the person, not.
If this is not strictly regulated it would be easy to create a full database with every detail you want by becoming a "partner" of any company who, by its function, implicitily tags private information to its NAW data-list.
First off, I used to be a member of that website, until it rolled downhill and everyone started using other social networks.
The magazines were non pornographic and aimed at gay youth. They didn't feature nudity and were sold at stores like chapters.
It had TONS of subscribers and at one point I would have believed it to be the largest gay social network. Not everyone would have their financial information or true information on the site, although it did end up possessing a ton of information about users.
Another day, another Kosian post on Slashdot.
You can't sell what isn't yours to sell. Period.
No story here. Oh, it's about gays or computers or ...
This is the year 2010. The novelty of being gay or involving computers is so Carter administration.
One of the targets of the FTC letter is the majority owner of the company that published XY (as the story says). The other target of the letter was an investor in XY. The assert ownership of the data.
Grant Gross, Washington reporter, IDG News Service
Are you sure the magazine name and website aren't KY Magazine and KY.com?
..but when did my private information provided to a publication become the PROPERTY of said publication, which can be SOLD?
I know that most of us fail to read the "fine print" on privacy disclosures when signing up for sites, but this seems pretty bold even by scummy info-harvesting standards.
Also, what about sites where you actually do business? I can understand shady sites like Facebook, MySpace or Xanga selling info to stay afloat. I can even understand scummy pseudo-free sites like blogTV, Stickam and Tinychat gathering information and selling it to god-knows who. But what about sites like Newegg and Amazon? There's almost NO WAY to do business with these sites without giving up private information. Is my information theirs, and they can do whatever they want with it? If Newegg ever goes bankrupt, will they pimp their customer database to the penis enhancer/herbal viagra/discount rolex spammer crowd?
And they say I look funny in my tin hat when I try to protect my privacy. Sheesh!
It's interesting how government upholds private contracts when it wants to, and violates them when it wants to, as in the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler, which involved overturning longstanding, traditional contracts with lenders to give certain lenders a larger share of the cut-up pie upon dissolution.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Wow, that's so typically US American...
I'd never touch a gun and I don't tend to get bashed either. How about better educating society instead of arming everybody to their teeth?
You can't sell what isn't yours to sell. Period.
Yes, but is it your information they're holding for a particular purpose (sending you a magazine), and thus your property or is it their information simply about you, and thus their property?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
That's irrelevant. The information is an asset and they aren't free to dispose of the assets.
Addresses are not private property, even if the road and all surrounding land are private property. Addresses are a function of license to use the road which comes from the government.
It's similar to the way a font can be copyrihted but IP ownership of letters, themselves, is impossible.
Hmmm...well...that's more interesting than I first thought. One way to view this is the FTC is trying to prevent selling of assets because there was a privacy clause? I guess they'd pursue this as fraud?
This is a very important legal issue, much broader than its narrow “gay” context, and the FTC is right! Some bankruptcy courts have permitted companies in Chapter 7 or 11 bankruptcy to sell the private information their members or customers have shared with them, in reliance upon privacy policies and guarantees, free and clear of those privacy guarantees to raise money for administrative expenses and to pay creditors. This is not that new an issue, but is one calling for such attention. It is generally accepted today that purely personal and private information, the public disclosure of which would be highly offensive to a hypothetical reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities, is subject to rights of privacy which have developed at common law and by statute. The late conservative Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote at least one of the key Supreme Court opinions establishing this point. Contrary to the impressions of some posters here, the issue and potential legal precedent here transcends the "gay teen" context in this particular bankruptcy proceeding and is very likely to affect an awful lot of us "straight" adults, not to mention teens, Consider just a few of the possibilities, e.g., a site for, for example: Survivors of childhood sexual assault including incest; Survivors of sexual assault as adults; Persons with medical conditions; Persons with mental health issues; Lawyers, doctors, hospitals, drug makers or testing labs, or pharmacies, medical records storage and retrieval firms, etc. who go bankrupt holding your personal, private, and confidential data; Personal or business financial data transfer or storage; Persons seeking lawyers or legal advice; I’ve been there. Trying to check some data on Russian – Argentine trade for an academic research paper when both currencies had multiple exchange rates and were legally non-convertible got me on a CIA list of suspected Soviet spies, long before the Internet, and our government kept me on that list and lied to my U. s. Senator and me about it for a generation before finally admitting it to me, years after they said then that they had told Nelson Rockefeller about it. . My law practice very unexpectedly came to involve representing an awful lot of survivors, and a few perpetrators, of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, mostly heterosexual incest. Some were members of the immediate and near extended families of, and molested by, prominent persons including elected and high appointed officials palmed off on us by both political parties, who, of course, never got investigated much less busted. Childhood incest survivor clients of mine, and I, have had occasions to go to, register, and post on sites we hope nobody ever connects us with. I have also represented a “gay” teen charged with the murder of a “gay” adult, among other occasions I have had to research both sides of controversial “gay” issues. The first time I addressed a committee of the Texas Legislature in support of a bill protecting the privacy of individuals undergoing psychotherapy, and my proposed amendment to ensure that this would cover group therapy sessions with or without the licensed therapist present but at his direction, not one member, practically all lawyers, realized that Texas did not yet have any settled legal protection for the privacy and confidentiality of doctor-patient communications yet. HIPAA notwithstanding, there are still an awful lot of gaps, not to mention unsettled areas, in medical and psychological, among other areas of, privacy law. I read on one computer-related site, to which I have lost the citation, that legal counsel for one of the large companies developing computerized medical records, proposed by Bush and provided for in the new PPAPA “healthcare” bill, has said that HIPAA does not protect the privacy of such stored records. Sale in bankruptcy of personal and private data obtained under a promise of privacy protection presents a very different issue than the closer one, t