Borders Bust Means B&N May Get Your Shopping History

coondoggie writes "To perhaps no one's surprise, Borders bookstore collected a ton of consumer information — such as personal data, including records of particular book and video sales — during its normal course of business. Such personal information Borders promised never to share without consumer consent. But now that the company is being sold off as part of its bankruptcy filing, all privacy promises are off. Reuters wrote this week that Barnes & Noble, which paid almost $14 million for Borders' intellectual assets (including customer information) at auction last week, said it should not have to comply with certain customer-privacy standards recommended by a third-party ombudsman."

Comments

Re:how is this legal?

[0123456]

If the privacy policy said only Borders would access the data then when Borders ceases to exist than so should the data.

Data doesn't disappear just because the company does. This is why anyone who's interested in privacy should be ensuring that no-one else has their data in the first place.

A 'privacy policy' is not a legally-binding agreement, and even if it was there's no guarantee that it would apply in bankruptcy.

Re:how is this legal?

[TemporalBeing]

I think part of this is legal - B&N doesn't want to find itself ensnared by legal complications resulting from deficiencies in Borders' data collection or handling practices.

While IANAL, From my limited understanding of Bankruptcy law, the courts can basically dissolve nearly any contract in place. So as far as the Bankruptcy court is concerned the Private Policy doesn't exist, and they can sell the information off regardless of what the Private Policy said. The Privacy Policy only protects against what Borders itself can do with the data in the course of their own business, but once you get to Bankruptcy court then all bets are off. That is the problem with Privacy Policies.

Now, if another company simply bought Borders then the Privacy Policy would still be in effect. The issue only comes into play when a company goes through Bankruptcy. Privacy Policies might even survive restructuring under Chapter 11 Bankruptcy; but it won't likely survive Chapter 7 Bankruptcy.

That said, I think this is one area that Congress should address and fix - so the Bankruptcy courts are not so free to break the Privacy Policies, however restrictive the company may have made them.